Sample records for forest fires detected

Automated early firedetection systems have recently received a significant amount of attention due to their importance in protecting the global environment. Some emergent technologies such as ground-based, satellite-based remote sensing and distributed sensor networks systems have been used to detectforestfires in the early stages. In this study, a radio-acoustic sounding system with fine space and time resolution capabilities for continuous monitoring and early detection of forestfires is proposed. Simulations show that remote thermal mapping of a particular forest region by the proposed system could be a potential solution to the problem of early detection of forestfires. PMID:22573967

Automated early firedetection systems have recently received a significant amount of attention due to their importance in protecting the global environment. Some emergent technologies such as ground-based, satellite-based remote sensing and distributed sensor networks systems have been used to detectforestfires in the early stages. In this study, a radio-acoustic sounding system with fine space and time resolution capabilities for continuous monitoring and early detection of forestfires is proposed. Simulations show that remote thermal mapping of a particular forest region by the proposed system could be a potential solution to the problem of early detection of forestfires. PMID:22573967

According to infrared imaging features of forestfire, we use image processing technology which is conducive to early detection and prevention of forestfires. We use image processing technology based on infrared imaging features of forestfire which is conducive to early detection and prevention of forestfires. In order to the timeliness and accuracy of firedetection, this paper proposes a forestfiredetection method based on infrared image technology. We take gray histogram analysis to collected Cruising image. The image which will be detected is segmented by the adaptive dynamic threshold. Then the suspected ignitions are extracted in the image after segmentation. The ignition of forestfire which form image in the infrared image is almost circular. We use the circular degree of suspected ignition as the decision basis of the fire in the infrared image. Through the analysis of position correlation which is the same suspected ignition between adjacent frames, we judge whether there is a fire in the image. In order to verify the effectiveness of the method, we adopt image sequences of forestfire to do experiment. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm under the conditions of different light conditions and complex backgrounds, which can effectively eliminate distractions and extract the fire target. The accuracy firedetection rate is above 95 percent. All fire can be detected. The method can quickly identify fire flame and high-risk points of early fire. The structure of method is clear and efficient which processing speed is less than 25 frames per second. So it meets the application requirement of real-time processing.

The potential of using infrared scanners for the detection of forestfires is discussed. An experiment is described in which infrared and visual detection systems were used jointly to study timber firedetection. Many fires were detected visually but missed by the airborne IR system, and many fires were detected by the IR system but missed visually. Until more is learned about the relationship between heat output and smoke output from latent fires, the relative effectiveness of visual and IR systems cannot be determined. The 1970 tests indicated that IR used in combination with visual detection will result in a more efficient system than visual alone. Even with limited knowledge of the relative effectiveness of the two systems, operational use of a combined system can be used to substantially reduce total firefighting costs.

The distribution of aerosol load in the atmosphere due to two forestfires near Sofia (the capital city of Bulgaria) was studied using two aerosol lidars which operated at 510.6 nm and 1064 nm. Experimental data is presented as 2D-heatmaps of the evolution of attenuated backscatter coefficient profiles and mean profile of the aerosol backscatter coefficient, calculated for each lidar observation. Backscatter related Angstrom exponent was used as a criterion in particle size estimation of detected smoke layers. Calculated minimal values at altitudes where the aerosol layer was observed corresponded to predominant fraction of coarse aerosol. Dust-transport forecast maps and calculations of backward trajectories were employed to make conclusions about aerosol's origin. They confirmed the local transport of smoke aerosol over the city and lidar station. DREAM forecast maps predicted neither cloud cover, nor Saharan load in the air above Sofia on the days of measurements. The results of lidar observations are discussed in conjunction with meteorological situation, aiming to better explain the reason for the observed aerosol stratification. The data of regular radio sounding of the atmosphere showed a characteristic behavior with small differences of the values between the air temperature and dew-point temperature profiles at aerosol smoke layer altitude. So the resulting stratification revealed the existence of atmospheric layers with aerosol trapping properties.

A promising daytime smoke plume detection for a land-based early forestfiredetection system is proposed. The visible video imagery from a land-based monitoring camera is processed to detect the smoke which likely rises in an early stage of a forestfire. Unlike the fire core and its surrounding heat which are detected via day/night infrared imaging, the relatively cold smoke plume can only be captured in the visible spectrum of light. The smoke plume is detected via exploitation of its temporal signature. This is accomplished via Principal Component Transformation (PCT) operations on consecutive sequences of visible video frames followed by spatial filtering of one of the resulting low-order Principal Component (PC) images. It is shown that the blue channel of the Red, Green, Blue (RGB) color camera is most effective in detecting the smoke plume. Smoke plume is clearly detected and isolated via simple blurring, thresholding, and median filtering of one of the resulting low-order principle component (PC) images. The robustness of this PCA-based method relative to simple temporal frame differencing and use of color, i.e., visible spectral signature of smoke, are discussed. Various parameters of the system including the required observation time and number of frames to retain for PCT, selection of which low-order PC to use, and types and sizes of the filters applied to the selected PC image to detect and isolate the smoke plume, are discussed.

The Fire Logistics Airborne Mapping Equipment (FLAME) system, mounted in a twin-engine and airplane operated by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is an airborne instrument for detecting and pinpointing forestfires that might escape ground detection. The FLAME equipment rack includes the operator interface, a video monitor, the system's control panel and film output. FLAME's firedetection sensor is an infrared line scanner system that identifies fire boundaries. Sensor's information is correlated with the aircraft's position and altitude at the time the infrared imagery is acquired to fix the fire's location on a map. System can be sent to a fire locale anywhere in the U.S. at the request of a regional forester. USFS felt a need for a more advanced system to deliver timely fire information to fire management personnel in the decade of the 1990s. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) conducted a study, jointly sponsored by NASA and USDA, on what advanced technologies might be employed to produce an end-to-end thermal infrared firedetection and mapping system. That led to initiation of the Firefly system, currently in development at JPL and targeted for operational service beginning in 1992. Firefly will employ satellite-reference position fixing and provide performance superior to FLAME.

We present a fire alarm system based on image processing that detectsfire accidents in various environments. To reduce false alarms that frequently appeared in earlier systems, we combined image features including color, motion, and blinking information. We specifically define the color conditions of fires in hue, saturation and value, and RGB color space. Fire features are represented as intensity variation, color mean and variance, motion, and image differences. Moreover, blinking fire features are modeled by using crossing patches. We propose an algorithm that classifies patches into fire or nonfire areas by using random forest supervised learning. We design an embedded surveillance device made with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene housing for stable firedetection in outdoor environments. The experimental results show that our algorithm works robustly in complex environments and is able to detectfires in real time.

Forestfires can be the cause of environmental catastrophe, with the natural outcomes of serious ecological and economic damages, together with the possibility to endanger human safety. At the aim to reduce this catastrophe several author have been shown that the Laser light scattering can be uses to reveals the particulate emitted in the smoke. Infact experimental and theoretical investigations have shown that lidar is a powerful tool to detect the tenuous smoke plumes produced by forestfires at an early stage. In early 90's Arbolino and Andreucci have shown the theoretical possibility to detect the particulate emitted in atmosphere from smoke forestfire. Vilar at all have shown experimentally the possibility to measure the density variation in atmosphere due to plume emitted in forestfire event. Gaudio at all. have already shown that it is possible to evaluate water vapor emitted in smoke of vegetable fuel using a CO2 dial system. In this paper a theoretical model to evaluate the capabilities of a lidar system in fire surveillance of wooded areas will be presented. In particular we intend propose a technique to minimizing the false alarm in the detection of forestfire by lidar based on a measurement of second components emitted in a combustion process. Usually to detect a fire alarm a rapid increase of aerosol amount is measured. If the backscattering signal report a peak, the presences of a forestfire will be probable. Our idea to confirm this hypothesis is measure the second components emitted in a forestfire at the aim to minimize the false alarm. The simulated measurements of the humidity amount within the smoke plume will be carried out by means of Raman analysis. Fixing the burning rate of the vegetable-fuels, the maximum range of detection will be evaluated.

An improved method using variance between-class and smoke plume mask is described. The brightness temperature threshold of potential fire pixels was adjusted to be 305 K. Based on the variance between-class of TIR channel brightness temperature and a smoke plume detection algorithm, the improved algorithm can separate the hot fire spots from the background and seek out the cool fire spots, respectively, with suitable thresholds of variance between-class. This algorithm has been used in the forestfires that happened in Fujian province and Heilongjiang province. Study shows that detection results with the algorithm are more satisfactory. It is adapted in different environments and can be more accurately detected the high-temperature fire spot and the smoder at low temperature. It increases the ability and accuracy to detectfire spots. PMID:20939308

Forest and rural fires are one of the main causes of environmental degradation in Mediterranean countries. Existing firedetection systems only focus on detection, but not on the verification of the fire. However, almost all of them are just simulations, and very few implementations can be found. Besides, the systems in the literature lack scalability. In this paper we show all the steps followed to perform the design, research and development of a wireless multisensor network which mixes sensors with IP cameras in a wireless network in order to detect and verify fire in rural and forest areas of Spain. We have studied how many cameras, sensors and access points are needed to cover a rural or forest area, and the scalability of the system. We have developed a multisensor and when it detects a fire, it sends a sensor alarm through the wireless network to a central server. The central server selects the closest wireless cameras to the multisensor, based on a software application, which are rotated to the sensor that raised the alarm, and sends them a message in order to receive real-time images from the zone. The camera lets the fire fighters corroborate the existence of a fire and avoid false alarms. In this paper, we show the test performance given by a test bench formed by four wireless IP cameras in several situations and the energy consumed when they are transmitting. Moreover, we study the energy consumed by each device when the system is set up. The wireless sensor network could be connected to Internet through a gateway and the images of the cameras could be seen from any part of the world. PMID:22291533

Thermal infrared imagery from several satellite instruments, such as the NOAA AVHRR and the NASA MODIS, is presently used to detect and map forestfires. But while these radiometers can identify fires they are designed and optimized for cloud detection, providing relatively low spatial resolution and quickly saturating even for small fires. Efforts to detect and monitor forestfires from space would benefit from the development of single-sensor satellites designed specifically for this purpose. With the advent of uncooled thermal detectors, and thus the absence of aggressive cooling, the possibility of developing small satellites for the purpose of firedetection and monitoring becomes practical and cost-effective. Thus is the case with the Economical Microbolometer Based Environmental Radiometer Satellite (EMBERSat) program. The objective of this program is to develop a single, prototype satellite that will provide multiband thermal imagery with a spatial resolution of 250m and a dynamic range of 300-1000K. The thermal imaging payload has flight heritage in the Infrared Spectral Imaging Radiometer that flew aboard mission STS-85 and the spacecraft is a variant of the SimpleSat bus launched from the shuttle Columbia as part of STS-105. The EMBERSat program is a technology demonstration initiative with the eventual goal of providing high-resolution thermal imagery to both the scientific community and the public.

Thermal infrared imagery from several satellite instruments, such as the NOAA AVHRR and the NASA MODIS, is presently used to detect and map forestfires. But while these radiometers can identify fires they are designed and optimized for cloud detection, providing relatively low spatial resolution and quickly saturating even for small fires. Efforts to detect and monitor forestfires from space would benefit from the development of single-sensor satellites designed specifically for this purpose. With the advent of uncooled thermal detectors, and thus the absence of aggressive cooling, the possibility of developing small satellites for the purpose of firedetection and monitoring becomes practical and cost-effective. Thus is the case with the Economical Microbolometer Based Environmental Radiometer Satellite (EMBERSat) program. The objective of this program is to develop a single, prototype satellite that will provide multiband thermal imagery with a spatial resolution of 250m and a dynamic range of 300-1000K. The thermal imaging payload has flight heritage in the Infrared Spectral Imaging Radiometer that flew aboard mission STS-85 and the spacecraft is a variant of the SimpleSat bus launched from the shuttle Columbia as part of STS-109. The EMBERSat program is a technology demonstration initiative with the eventual goal of providing high-resolution thermal imagery to both the scientific community and the public.

A land-based early forestfiredetection scheme which exploits the infrared (IR) temporal signature of fire plume is described. Unlike common land-based and/or satellite-based techniques which rely on measurement and discrimination of fire plume directly from its infrared and/or visible reflectance imagery, this scheme is based on exploitation of fire plume temporal signature, i.e., temperature fluctuations over the observation period. The method is simple and relatively inexpensive to implement. The false alarm rate is expected to be lower that of the existing methods. Land-based infrared (IR) cameras are installed in a step-stare-mode configuration in potential fire-prone areas. The sequence of IR video frames from each camera is digitally processed to determine if there is a fire within camera's field of view (FOV). The process involves applying a principal component transformation (PCT) to each nonoverlapping sequence of video frames from the camera to produce a corresponding sequence of temporally-uncorrelated principal component (PC) images. Since pixels that form a fire plume exhibit statistically similar temporal variation (i.e., have a unique temporal signature), PCT conveniently renders the footprint/trace of the fire plume in low-order PC images. The PC image which best reveals the trace of the fire plume is then selected and spatially filtered via simple threshold and median filter operations to remove the background clutter, such as traces of moving tree branches due to wind.

Fires are a common occurrence in the Siberian boreal forest. The MOD14 Thermal anomalies product of the Terra MODIS Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer) product set is designed to detect thermal anomalies (i.e. hotspots or fires) on the Earth's surface. Recent field studies showed a dependence of fire occurrence on topography. In this study MODIS thermal anomaly data and SRTM topography data were merged and analyzed to evaluate if forestfires are more likely to occur at certain combinations of elevation, slope and aspect. Using the satellite data over a large area can lead to better understanding how topography and forestfires are related. The study area covers a 2.5 Million krn(exp 2) portion of the Central Siberian southern taiga from 72 deg to 110 deg East and from 50 deg to 60 deg North. About 57% of the study area is forested and 80% of the forest grows between 200 and 1000 m. Forests with pine (Pinus sylvestris), larch (Larix sibirica, L. gmelinii), Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica), spruce (Picea obovata.) and fir (Abies sibirica) cover most of the landscape. Deciduous stands with birch (Betula pendula, B. pubescens) and aspen (Populus tremula) cover the areas of lower elevation in this region. The climate of this area is distinctly continental with long, cold winters and short hot summers. The tree line in this part of the world is around 1500 m in elevation with alpine tundra, snow and ice fields and rock outcrops extending up to over 3800 m. A 500 m resolution landcover map was developed using 2001 MODIS MOD13 Normalized Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Middle Infrared (MIR) products for seven 16-day periods. The classification accuracy was over 87%. The SRTM version 2 data, which is distributed in 1 degree by 1 degree tiles were mosaiced using the ENVI software. In this study, only those MODIS pixels were used that were flagged as "nominal or high confidence fire" by the MODIS fire product team. Using MODIS data from the years 2000 to 2005 along with the

This article proposes a novel method for detectingforestfires, through the use of a new color index, called the ForestFireDetection Index (FFDI), developed by the authors. The index is based on methods for vegetation classification and has been adapted to detect the tonalities of flames and smoke; the latter could be included adaptively into the Regions of Interest (RoIs) with the help of a variable factor. Multiple tests have been performed upon database imagery and present promising results: a detection precision of 96.82% has been achieved for image sizes of 960 × 540 pixels at a processing time of 0.0447 seconds. This achievement would lead to a performance of 22 f/s, for smaller images, while up to 54 f/s could be reached by maintaining a similar detection precision. Additional tests have been performed on fires in their early stages, achieving a precision rate of p = 96.62%. The method could be used in real-time in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs), with the aim of monitoring a wider area than through fixed surveillance systems. Thus, it would result in more cost-effective outcomes than conventional systems implemented in helicopters or satellites. UASs could also reach inaccessible locations without jeopardizing people’s safety. On-going work includes implementation into a commercially available drone. PMID:27322264

This article proposes a novel method for detectingforestfires, through the use of a new color index, called the ForestFireDetection Index (FFDI), developed by the authors. The index is based on methods for vegetation classification and has been adapted to detect the tonalities of flames and smoke; the latter could be included adaptively into the Regions of Interest (RoIs) with the help of a variable factor. Multiple tests have been performed upon database imagery and present promising results: a detection precision of 96.82% has been achieved for image sizes of 960 × 540 pixels at a processing time of 0.0447 seconds. This achievement would lead to a performance of 22 f/s, for smaller images, while up to 54 f/s could be reached by maintaining a similar detection precision. Additional tests have been performed on fires in their early stages, achieving a precision rate of p = 96.62%. The method could be used in real-time in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs), with the aim of monitoring a wider area than through fixed surveillance systems. Thus, it would result in more cost-effective outcomes than conventional systems implemented in helicopters or satellites. UASs could also reach inaccessible locations without jeopardizing people's safety. On-going work includes implementation into a commercially available drone. PMID:27322264

... Larger Image A new look at smoke from the Chisholm forestfire, which ignited on May 23, 2001 about 160 kilometers north of ... in detail by M. Fromm and R. Servranckx, "Transport of forestfire smoke above the tropopause by supercell convection", Geophys. Res. ...

Firefly is an airborne system for imaging forestfires. It uses satellite-based navigation for greater positioning accuracy and offers timeliness in fire location data delivery with on board data processing and a direct aircraft-to-fire camp communications link. Developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the USFS, it has an infrared line scanner to identify fire boundaries and an infrared sensor system that can penetrate smoke to image the ground. Firefly is an outgrowth of a previous collaboration that produced FLAME, an airborne fire mapping instrument. Further refinements are anticipated by NASA and the United States Forest Service (USFS).

The research relating to airborne fire fighting systems is reviewed to provide NASA/Langley Research Center with current information on the use of aircraft in forestfire operations, and to identify research requirements for future operations. A literature survey, interview of forestfire service personnel, analysis and synthesis of data from research reports and independent conclusions, and recommendations for future NASA-LRC programs are included.

Presents a model that integrates high school science with the needs of the local scientific community. Describes how a high school ecology class conducted scientific research in fire ecology that benefited the students and a state park forest ecologist. (MKR)

Forestfires have strong impact on the composition of trace gases and aerosols both in the troposphere and in the stratosphere. To quantify the influence of boreal forestfires, the fire seasons of 1997 and 1998 are compared. In contrast to 1997, fire activity in 1998 was very strong especially over Canada and Eastern Siberia. Our analysis was done in 3 steps: First, Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) aerosol index (AI), Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) tropospheric NO2 columns, Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGEII) and Polar Ozone and Aerosol Measurement III (POAMIII) aerosol data were inspected to determine biomass burning effects during the seasons 1997 and 1998. Second, transport of forestfire emissions was simulated with the tracer transport model FLEXPART over the whole burning season 1998. Aerosols, CO and NOx tracers were emitted in these simulations from Siberian and Canadian forestfires accord ing to the fire information from ATSR (Along Track Scanning Radiometer) to investigate transport patterns of forestfire emissions. Third, to combine FLEXPART simulation results and satellite data directly, case studies of strong burning events were analysed. These case studies show good agreement of satellite data and the transport model. Data from all platforms display enhanced signals during 1998's burning season.

The SITHON system, a fully wireless optical imaging system, integrating a network of in-situ optical cameras linking to a multi-layer GIS database operated by Control Operating Centres, has been developed in response to the need for early detection, notification and monitoring of forestfires. This article presents in detail the architecture and the components of SITHON, and demonstrates the first encouraging results of an experimental test with small controlled fires over Sithonia Peninsula in Northern Greece. The system has already been scheduled to be installed in some fire prone areas of Greece. PMID:22408536

There is great interest in the ability to remotely monitor changes in boreal forest ecosystems for the understanding and balancing of the global carbon budget. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the utility of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR), particularly the ERS-1 C-VV SAR, for the detection and interpretation of fire-disturbed boreal forest ecosystems in the state of Alaska. The Alaska Fire Service has provided fire maps and records for comparison with the SAR data. Preliminary results have found that the following all have an influence on the detectability of a fire-scar (1) the time elapsed since the fire occurred, (2) the season in which the SAR data is collected, and (3) the geomorphology of the landscape in which the fire occurred. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of SAR in the estimation of the areal extent of fires. It also evaluates the potential usefulness of SAR in providing information on the spatial variability of bum intensity.

Forestfires have major impact on ecosystems and greatly impact the amount of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere. This paper presents an overview in the forestfiredetection, emission estimation, and fire risk prediction in China using satellite imagery, climate data, and various simulation models over the past three decades. Since the 1980s, remotely-sensed data acquired by many satellites, such as NOAA/AVHRR, FY-series, MODIS, CBERS, and ENVISAT, have been widely utilized for detectingforestfire hot spots and burned areas in China. Some developed algorithms have been utilized for detecting the forestfire hot spots at a sub-pixel level. With respect to modeling the forest burning emission, a remote sensing data-driven Net Primary productivity (NPP) estimation model was developed for estimating forest biomass and fuel. In order to improve the forestfire risk modeling in China, real-time meteorological data, such as surface temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, have been used as the model input for improving prediction of forestfire occurrence and its behavior. Shortwave infrared (SWIR) and near infrared (NIR) channels of satellite sensors have been employed for detecting live fuel moisture content (FMC), and the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) was used for evaluating the forest vegetation condition and its moisture status. PMID:21909297

Forestfires have major impact on ecosystems and greatly impact the amount of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere. This paper presents an overview in the forestfiredetection, emission estimation, and fire risk prediction in China using satellite imagery, climate data, and various simulation models over the past three decades. Since the 1980s, remotely-sensed data acquired by many satellites, such as NOAA/AVHRR, FY-series, MODIS, CBERS, and ENVISAT, have been widely utilized for detectingforestfire hot spots and burned areas in China. Some developed algorithms have been utilized for detecting the forestfire hot spots at a sub-pixel level. With respect to modeling the forest burning emission, a remote sensing data-driven Net Primary productivity (NPP) estimation model was developed for estimating forest biomass and fuel. In order to improve the forestfire risk modeling in China, real-time meteorological data, such as surface temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, have been used as the model input for improving prediction of forestfire occurrence and its behavior. Shortwave infrared (SWIR) and near infrared (NIR) channels of satellite sensors have been employed for detecting live fuel moisture content (FMC), and the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) was used for evaluating the forest vegetation condition and its moisture status. PMID:21909297

Conditions on the perimeter of a forestfire can be obtained by use of airborne remote sensing techniques demonstrated by Ames Research Center. An Ames U-2 high-altitude survey aircraft served as an aerial fire observation system. Equipped with two types of sensors, the U-2 produces real-time infrared images of fireground scenes. Information acquired by the U-2's scanners defines the fire boundary and aids fire management decisions by showing the size, shape and direction of burn and the locations of hot spots in the fire zone. U-2 sends sensor date in digital form to an antenna at Ames Research Center. There the data is computer processed into images which are overlaid on U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps of the fire area. Maps are then transmitted by telecopy machine directly to fire control center. Whole process takes less than 10 minutes and the U-2 can provide information for up to five hours. Ames antenna can pick up signals from the U-2 anywhere within a 300 mile radius from Ames.

In most countries, the loss of biodiversity caused by the fires is worrying. In this sense, the firesdetection towers are crucial for rapid identification of fire outbreaks and can also be used in environmental inspection, biodiversity monitoring, telecommunications mechanisms, telemetry and others. Currently the methodologies for allocating firedetection towers over large areas are numerous, complex and non-standardized by government supervisory agencies. Therefore, this study proposes and evaluates different methodologies to best location of points to install firedetection towers considering the topography, risk areas, conservation units and heat spots. Were used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques and unaligned stratified systematic sampling for implementing and evaluating 9 methods for allocating firedetection towers. Among the methods evaluated, the C3 method was chosen, represented by 140 firedetection towers, with coverage of: a) 67% of the study area, b) 73.97% of the areas with high risk, c) 70.41% of the areas with very high risk, d) 70.42% of the conservation units and e) 84.95% of the heat spots in 2014. The proposed methodology can be adapted to areas of other countries. PMID:27110968

Every year, hundreds of thousands of hectares of European forests are destroyed by fires. Due to the particular topography, landscape and demographic distribution in Europe (very different from typical scenarios of China, USA, Canada and Australia), rapidity in fire sighting is still the determining factor in limiting damages to people and goods. Moreover, the possibility of early firedetection means also potentially to reduce the size of the event to be faced, the necessary fire fighting resources and, therefore, even the reaction times. In such a context, integration of satellite technologies (mainly high temporal resolution data) and traditional surveillance systems within the fire fighting procedures seems to positively impact on the effectiveness of active fire fighting as demonstrated by recent experiences over Italian territory jointly performed by University of Basilicata, IMAA-CNR and Local Authorities. Real time implementation was performed since 2007, during fire seasons, over several Italian regions with different fire regimes and features, in order to assess the actual potential of different satellite-based firedetection products to support regional and local authorities in efficiently fighting fires and better mitigating their negative effects. Real-time campaigns were carried out in strict collaboration with end-users within the framework of specific projects (i.e. the AVVISA, AVVISTA and AVVISA-Basilicata projects) funded by Civil Protection offices of Regione Lombardia, Provincia Regionale di Palermo and Regione Basilicata in charge of fire risk management and mitigation. A tailored training program was dedicated to the personnel of Regional Civil Protection offices in order to ensure the full understanding and the better integration of satellite based products and tools within the existing fire fighting protocols. In this work, outcomes of these practices are shown and discussed, especially highlighting the impact that a real time satellite

These ASTER images cover an area of 11 x 14 km on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona, and were acquired May 12, 2000. The left image displays bands 3,2,1 in RGB, displaying vegetation as red. The large dark area is burned forest, and small smoke plumes can be seen at the edges where active fires are burning. The right display substitutes SWIR band 8 for band 3. The bright red spots are the active fires, visible because the SWIR wavelength region has the capability to penetrate through the smoke. This image is located at 35.9 degrees north latitude and 113.4 degrees west longitude.

The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Remote sensing technologies are an ideal platform to examine the extent and impact of fire on the landscape. In this study we assess that capacity of the RapidEye constellation and Landsat (Thematic Mapper and Operational Land Imager to map fine-scale burn attributes for a small, low severity prescribed fire in a dry Western Canadian forest. Estimates of burn severity from field data were collated into a simple burn index and correlated with a selected suite of common spectral vegetation indices. Burn severity classes were then derived to map fire impacts and estimate consumed woody surface fuels (diameter ≥2.6 cm). All correlations between the simple burn index and vegetation indices produced significant results (p < 0.01), but varied substantially in their overall accuracy. Although the Landsat Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index provided the best regression fit (R2 = 0.56), results suggested that RapidEye provided much more spatially detailed estimates of tree damage (Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index, R2 = 0.51). Consumption estimates of woody surface fuels ranged from 3.38 ± 1.03 Mg ha-1 to 11.73 ± 1.84 Mg ha-1, across four derived severity classes with uncertainties likely a result of changing foliage moisture between the before and after fire images. While not containing spectral information in the short wave infrared, the spatial variability provided by the RapidEye imagery has potential for mapping and monitoring fine scale forest attributes, as well as the potential to resolve fire damage at the individual tree level.

This paper addresses the impacts of climate change on forestfires and describes how this, in turn, will impact on the forests of the United States. In addition to reviewing existing studies on climate change and forestfires we have used two transient general circulation models (GCMs), namely the Hadley Centre and the Canadian GCMs, to estimate fire season severity in the middle of the next century. Ratios of 2 x CO2 seasonal severity rating (SSR) over present day SSR were calculated for the means and maximums for North America. The results suggest that the SSR will increase by 10-50% over most of North America; although, there are regions of little change or where the SSR may decrease by the middle of the next century. Increased SSRs should translate into increased forestfire activity. Thus, forestfires could be viewed as an agent of change for US forests as the fire regime will respond rapidly to climate warming. This change in the fire regime has the potential to overshadow the direct effects of climate change on species distribution and migration. PMID:11087028

Forestfires in Canton Ticino (Switzerland) are very complex phenomena. Meteorological data can explain some occurrences of fires in time, but not necessarily in space. Using anthropogenic and geographical feature data with the random forest algorithm, this study tries to highlight factors that most influence the fire-ignition and to identify areas under risk. The fundamental scientific problem considered in the present research deals with an application of random forest algorithms for the analysis and modeling of forestfires patterns in a high dimensional input feature space. This study is focused on the 2,224 anthropogenic forestfires among the 2,401 forestfire ignition points that have occurred in Canton Ticino from 1969 to 2008. Provided by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), the database characterizes each fire by their location (x,y coordinates of the ignition point), start date, duration, burned area, and other information such as ignition cause and topographic features such as slope, aspect, altitude, etc. In addition, the database VECTOR25 from SwissTopo was used to extract information of the distances between fire ignition points and anthropogenic structures like buildings, road network, rail network, etc. Developed by L. Breiman and A. Cutler, the Random Forests (RF) algorithm provides an ensemble of classification and regression trees. By a pseudo-random variable selection for each split node, this method grows a variety of decision trees that do not return the same results, and thus by a committee system, returns a value that has a better accuracy than other machine learning methods. This algorithm incorporates directly measurement of importance variable which is used to display factors affecting forestfires. Dealing with this parameter, several models can be fit, and thus, a prediction can be made throughout the validity domain of Canton Ticino. Comprehensive RF analysis was carried out in order to 1

Objective of the document is to define lines of development and distribution of the services to support detection, prevention and planning of the agricultural-forest-rural land against fire. The services will be a valid support on hand of the Regional and National Administrations involved in the agricultural-forest-rural activities (Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Policies, National Forest Police, ecc..), through the employment of the SIAN "National Agricultural Informative System", that is the integrated national information system for the entire agriculture, forestry and fisheries Administration. The services proposals would be distributed through the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) of the SIAN: the GIS database is a single nation-wide digital graphic database consisting of: - Ortophotos: Aerial images of approz. 45 km2 each with ground resolution of 50 cm; - Cadastral maps: Land maps; - Thematic layers: Land use and crops identification The GIS services can take full advantage of the benefits of SIAN architectural model designed for best integration and interoperability with other Central and Local P.A. bodies whose main items are: - Integration of information from different sources; - Maintainance of the internal coeherence of any integrated information; - Flexibility with respect to technical or organizational changes The "innovative "services described below could be useful to support the development of institutional tasks of public Agencies and Administrations (es. Regions or Civil Protection agencies) according to than previewed from the D.Lgs. 173/98. Services of support to the management of the phenomenon of wildland fires The activities outlined in below figure, don't have a linear and defined temporal sequence, but a dynamic and time integration. It guarantees not only the integrated use of the various information, but also the value of every product, for level of accuracy, coherence and timeliness of the information. Description of four main

The Brazilian tropical moist forest biome supports the world's largest contiguous area of tropical forests and is experiencing high rates of deforestation. Fires are proxy indicators of human pressure and deforestation. Previous studies using satellite active firedetections and the official Brazilian road vector data (IBGE- Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), including state, federal and some private roads, indicate that the majority of fires occur close to roads. In this quantitative study a new data set that also includes unofficial roads and navigable rivers acquired from Imazon (a non-profit research institution with a mission to promote sustainable development in the Amazon) are used to quantify annual distance distributions of MODIS Aqua and Terra satellite active firedetections for 2003 to 2009. The majority (> 93%) of active firedetections are within 10 km of a road or a navigable river bank. Inter-state and inter-annual differences in the distance distributions, that may capture inter-annual rates of road expansion and fire variability, are also presented. These results may be useful for improvement of regional fire prediction models.

In 1982, a northern British Columbia forestfire created a massive smoke plume that could be detected for several days in satellite imagery. The radiative and dynamical impacts of this large forestfire smoke plume are investigated using interactive prognostic models of atmospheric circulation, aerosol microphysics and transport, and radiative heat transfer.

We evaluated the contribution of catastrophic fires to the total burned area and the amount of tree mortality in Russia since the 1970’s. Such fires occurred in the central regions of European Russia (1972, 1976, 1989, 2002, 2010), Khabarovsk krai (1976, 1988, 1998), Amur region (1997-2002), Republics of Yakutia and Tuva (2002), Magadan and Kamchatka oblast (1984, 2001, 2010), and Irkutsk, Chita, Amur regions, Buryat, Agin national districts (2003, 2007-08). We define a catastrophic fire as a single high-severity fire that covers more than 10,000 ha and results in total consumption of the litter and humus layers and in high tree mortality, or the simultaneous occurrence of several high-severity fires in a given region with a total area exceeding 10,000 km2. Fires on this scale can cause substantial economic, social and environmental effects, with regional to global impacts. We hypothesize that there is a positive feedback between anticyclone growth and energy release from wildfires burning over large areas. Usually the first blocking anticyclone appears in June in Russia, bringing with it dry weather that increases fire hazard. The anticyclonic pattern has maximum activity in the end of July and disappears around the middle of August. When high fire activity occurs, the anticyclone may strengthen and develop a blocking character that prevents cyclonic patterns from moving into anticyclone-dominated areas, where the fire danger index may be more than six times the average maximum. The likelihood of uncontrolled fire situations developing increases greatly when the fire number and burned area exceed critical values as a function of conditions that favor high intensity fires. In such situations fire suppression by regional forest protection services becomes impossible and federal resources are required. If the appearance of a blocking anticyclone is forecast, active fire prevention and suppression of small fires (most of which appear to be human caused) is critical

It is challenging to detect burn severity and vegetation recovery because of the relatively long time period required to capture the ecosystem characteristics. Multitemporal remote sensing data can providemultitemporal observations before, during and after a wildfire, and can improve the change detection accuracy. The goal of this study is to examine the correlations between multitemporal spectral indices and field-observed burn severity, and to provide a practical method to estimate burn severity and vegetation recovery. The study site is the Jasper Fire area in the Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota, that burned during August and September 2000. Six multitemporal Landsat images acquired from 2000 (pre-fire), 2001 (post-fire), 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007 were used to assess burn severity. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), enhanced vegetation index (EVI), normalized burn ratio (NBR), integrated forest index (IFI) and the differences of these indices between the pre-fire and post-fire years were computed and analysed with 66 field-based composite burn index (CBI) plots collected in 2002. Results showed that differences of NDVI and differences of EVI between the pre-fire year and the first two years post-fire were highly correlated with the CBI scores. The correlations were low beyond the second year post-fire. Differences of NBR had good correlation with CBI scores in all study years. Differences of IFI had low correlation with CBI in the first year post-fire and had good correlation in later years. A CBI map of the burnt area was produced using regression tree models and the multitemporal images. The dynamics of four spectral indices from 2000 to 2007 indicated that both NBR and IFI are valuable for monitoring long-term vegetation recovery. The high burn severity areas had a much slower recovery than the moderate and low burn areas. ?? 2011 Taylor & Francis.

It is widely believed that contemporary wildfire suppression practices in the United States have contributed to conditions that facilitate large, destructive fires. We introduce a forest-fire model with natural fire-resistance that supports this theory. The model yields power-law frequency-size distributions of model fires with scaling exponent values 1.2 ≤ b ≤ 1.75, consistent with distributions of wildfires observed in the United States. We show a direct relationship between a fire's intensity and its burn area, and we show that aggressive suppression of small early season fires can compromise a region's natural fire-resistance, increasing the rate of large fires.

Continued hot, dry weather in the American west contributed to the spread of numerous fires over the weekend of July 29-30, 2000. This is the most active fire season in the United States since 1988, when large portions of Yellowstone National Park burned. One of the largest fires currently burning has consumed more than 63,000 acres in Sequoia National Forest. This NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) image shows the fire on the afternoon of July 30, 2000. Note the clouds above the smoke plume. These often form during large fires because updrafts lift warm air near the ground high into the atmosphere, cooling the air and causing the water vapor it contains to condense into droplets. The soot particles in the smoke also act as condensation nuclei for the droplets. View the animation of GOES data to see the smoke forming clouds. Image and Animation by Robert Simmon and Marit-Jentoft Nilsen, NASA GSFC, based on data from NOAA.

Instruments for land tract scanning and firedetection include: temperature sensor capable of detecting distant match flame; elevated television camera with automatic controls for light balance, position, filter, and focus; and scanner equipped with photocell to sense intensity of flying spot brought to it by sweep-and-scan mechanism.

Forestfire is an important factor affecting forest ecosystem succession. Recently, forestfire, especially forest lightning fire, shows an increasing trend under global warming. To study the relationships of forestfire with lightning is essential to accurately predict the forestfire in time. Daxing' anling Mountains is a region with high frequency of forest lightning fire in China, and an important experiment site to study the relationships of forestfire with lightning. Based on the forestfire records and the corresponding lightning and meteorological observation data in the Mountains from 1966 to 2007, this paper analyzed the relationships of forestfire with lightning in this region. In the period of 1966-2007, both the lightning fire number and the firedforest area in this region increased significantly. The meteorological factors affecting the forest lighting fire were related to temporal scales. At yearly scale, the forest lightning fire was significantly correlated with precipitation, with a correlation coefficient of -0.489; at monthly scale, it had a significant correlation with air temperature, the correlation coefficient being 0.18. The relationship of the forest lightning fire with lightning was also related to temporal scales. At yearly scale, there was no significant correlation between them; at monthly scale, the forest lightning fire was strongly correlated with lightning and affected by precipitation; at daily scale, a positive correlation was observed between forest lightning fire and lightning when the precipitation was less than 5 mm. According to these findings, a fire danger index based on ADTD lightning detection data was established, and a forest lightning fire forecast model was developed. The prediction accuracy of this model for the forest lightning fire in Daxing' anling Mountains in 2005-2007 was > 80%. PMID:23173444

Observations suggest that contemporary wildfire suppression practices in the United States have contributed to conditions that facilitate large, destructive fires. We introduce a forest-fire model with natural fire resistance that supports this theory. Fire resistance is defined with respect to the size and shape of clusters; the model yields power-law frequency-size distributions of model fires that are consistent with field observations in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota is known worldwide for its massive sculpture of four of the United States' most respected presidents. The Memorial landscape also is covered by extensive ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forest that has not burned in over a century. We compiled dendroecological and forest structural data from 29 plots across the 517-ha Memorial and used fire behavior modeling to reconstruct the historical fire regime and forest structure and compare them to current conditions. The historical fire regime is best characterized as one of low-severity surface fires with occasional (> 100 years) patches (< 100 ha) of passive crown fire. We estimate that only approximately 3.3% of the landscape burned as crown fire during 22 landscape fire years (recorded at > or = 25% of plots) between 1529 and 1893. The last landscape fire was in 1893. Mean fire intervals before 1893 varied depending on spatial scale, from 34 years based on scar-to-scar intervals on individual trees to 16 years between landscape fire years. Modal fire intervals were 11-15 years and did not vary with scale. Fire rotation (the time to burn an area the size of the study area) was estimated to be 30 years for surface fire and 800+ years for crown fire. The current forest is denser and contains more small trees, fewer large trees, lower canopy base heights, and greater canopy bulk density than a reconstructed historical (1870) forest. Fire behavior modeling using the NEXUS program suggests that surface fires would have dominated fire behavior in the 1870 forest during both moderate and severe weather conditions, while crown fire would dominate in the current forest especially under severe weather. Changes in the fire regime and forest structure at Mount Rushmore parallel those seen in ponderosa pine forests from the southwestern United States. Shifts from historical to current forest structure and the increased likelihood of crown fire justify the need for

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used as a tool to study the dispersion of the airborne pollutants that are originating from a forestfire. The set of relevant fluid dynamic equations is solved with the aid of the general equation solver (PHOENICS), whose graphical capability is used to display the results of the computation. The main objectives of the simulation are to show that such a dispersion model is possible to carry out, and that it gives physically reasonable results. CFD in general, and PHOENICS in particular, are shown to be a useful tool in this context.

Forestfires are complex events involving both space and time fluctuations. Understanding of their dynamics and pattern distribution is of great importance in order to improve the resource allocation and support fire management actions at local and global levels. This study aims at characterizing the temporal fluctuations of forestfire sequences observed in Portugal, which is the country that holds the largest wildfire land dataset in Europe. This research applies several exploratory data analysis measures to 302,000 forestfires occurred from 1980 to 2007. The applied clustering measures are: Morisita clustering index, fractal and multifractal dimensions (box-counting), Ripley's K-function, Allan Factor, and variography. These algorithms enable a global time structural analysis describing the degree of clustering of a point pattern and defining whether the observed events occur randomly, in clusters or in a regular pattern. The considered methods are of general importance and can be used for other spatio-temporal events (i.e. crime, epidemiology, biodiversity, geomarketing, etc.). An important contribution of this research deals with the analysis and estimation of local measures of clustering that helps understanding their temporal structure. Each measure is described and executed for the raw data (forestfires geo-database) and results are compared to reference patterns generated under the null hypothesis of randomness (Poisson processes) embedded in the same time period of the raw data. This comparison enables estimating the degree of the deviation of the real data from a Poisson process. Generalizations to functional measures of these clustering methods, taking into account the phenomena, were also applied and adapted to detect time dependences in a measured variable (i.e. burned area). The time clustering of the raw data is compared several times with the Poisson processes at different thresholds of the measured function. Then, the clustering measure value

This paper presents a summary of the forestfire reports in the insular Caribbean derived from both management reports and an analysis of publicly available Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrodiometer (MODIS) satellite active fire products from the region. A vast difference between the amount of fires reported by land managers and fire points in the MODIS Fire Information for Resource Management System data can be observed. Future research is recommended to better understand the nature of these differences. While there is a general lack of available statistical data on forestfires in the Caribbean, a few general observations can be made: Forestfires occur mainly in dry forest types (500 to 1000 mm of mean annual rainfall). These are also the areas where most human settlements are located. Lowland high forests and montane forests with higher rainfall (1000 and more mm y(-1)) are less susceptible to forestfire, but they can burn in exceptionally dry years. Most of the dry forest ecosystems in the Caribbean can be considered to be fire-sensitive ecosystems, while the pine forests in the Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas) are maintained by wildfires. In fire-sensitive ecosystems, uncontrolled burning often encourages the spread of alien invasive species. A Caribbean Fire Management Cooperation Strategy was developed between 2005 and 2006 under auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. This regional strategy aims to strengthen Caribbean fire management networking by encouraging closer collaboration among countries with similar ecological conditions. The strategy for the Caribbean identifies a number of research, training, and management activities to improve wildfire management capacity in the Caribbean. PMID:19205174

In this study, NIR and SWIR EO-1 Hyperion data acquired over two large Alaskan forestfires are used to detect active fires, map their immediate vicinity, and retrieve fire temperatures. The study sites are located in black spruce stands within the 2004 Boundary fire (215,000 ha total affected area) and the 2009 Wood River 1 fire (50,000 ha). Even though fires in the North American boreal forest ecosystem contribute greatly to global carbon cycling and large-scale air pollution, they have been less studied so far using satellite-borne imaging spectroscopy. We adapted the Hyperspectral FireDetection Index (HFDI) so that it worked well for the high-latitude Hyperion data. This involved selecting suitable bands which best separated fire from non-fire pixels and averaging them to further improve the detection signal. Resulting firedetection maps compare favorably to uniform radiance thresholding of the Hyperion data and are consistent with firesdetected on near-simultaneous Landsat 7 ETM+ data. Unsupervised classification of the vicinity of the active fire zones served to delineate 5 to 6 well separated classes: high- and low-intensity fire, various unburnt vegetation classes, recent fire scar, and a transitional zone ahead of the active fire front that shows evidence of fire impact but no emitted radiance component. Furthermore, MODTRAN5 was used for atmospheric correction to retrieve fire temperatures by modeling a mixture of emitted and reflected radiance signatures of the fire and background areas, respectively. As most of the carbon consumption and subsequent emissions in boreal forestfires stem from the combustion of dead plant material on the forest floor, estimates on fire intensities and high/low intensity burn areas provide valuable insight into the amount of carbon cycling in the system. Imaging spectroscopy can therefore contribute an important step forward in quantitative studies of boreal fires and their impacts. These techniques are set to advance

Forestfires cause billions of dollar damage to property and the environment in the world every year. In North Korea (NK) forestfire occurred frequently in the entire region with the exception of the western plains and massive forestfires broke out throughout NK in May 2004. Furthermore, few researches focused on NK forestfire because of data unavailability and inaccessibility to the region. Operational fire monitoring over large areas can be approached through satellite remote sensing (RS). Thus, it is necessary to investigate the area damaged by forestfire and get information of damaged area for restoration of forest in NK after reunification. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the location of forestfire and to estimate the damaged area by forestfire and finally to detect the landscape change after forestfire in Gangwon and South Hamgyong Province, NK using satellite RS data. In this study, we will investigate the area damaged by forestfire and investigate the spatial characteristics of forestfire in Gangwon and South Hamgyong Province using RS. Landsat data from USGS Were preprocessed (band composition), NBR and dNBR are calculated for figuring out the burned area and investigating the burn severity (BS) in burned area. NBR and dNBR (differenced NBR) are mostly useful to estimate BS by forestfires damage from RS data. The dNBR was then calculated by subtracting the post-fire NBR from the pre-fire NBR: The burned area from Landsat data processing were stored in GIS database to be retrieved and analyzed to figure out the chronological change pattern of forestfire damaged area. Finally, the spatiotemporal characteristics of forestfire in NK were analyzed and discussed to provide the information for restoring forestfire damaged area after reunification.

An overview is given of the basis for an analysis of combustable materials and potential ignition sources in a spacecraft. First, the burning process is discussed in terms of the production of the fire signatures normally associated with detection devices. These include convected and radiated thermal energy, particulates, and gases. Second, the transport processes associated with the movement of these from the fire to the detector, along with the important phenomena which cause the level of these signatures to be reduced, are described. Third, the operating characteristics of the individual types of detectors which influence their response to signals, are presented. Finally, vulnerability analysis using predictive fire modeling techniques is discussed as a means to establish the necessary response of the detection system to provide the level of protection required in the application.

Vegetation fires in the Brazilian Tropical Moist Forest Biome can be broadly classified into three types: i) Deforestation fires, lit to aid deforestation by burning of slashed, piled and dried forest biomass, ii) Maintenance fires, lit on agricultural fields or pasture areas to maintain and clear woody material and to rehabilitate degraded pasture areas, iii) Forestfires, associated with escaped anthropogenic fires or, less frequently, caused by lightning. Information on the incidence and spatial distribution of fire types is important as they have widely varying atmospheric emissions and ecological impacts. Satellite remote sensing offers a practical means of monitoring fires over areas as extensive as the Brazilian Tropical Moist Forest Biome which spans almost 4 million square kilometers. To date, fire type has been inferred based on the geographic context and proximity of satellite active firedetections relative to thematic land cover classes, roads, and forest edges, or by empirical consideration of the active firedetection frequency. In this paper a classification methodology is presented that demonstrates a way to classify the fire type of MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) active firedetections. Training and validation fire type data are defined conservatively for MODIS active firedetections using a land cover transition matrix that labels MODIS active fires by consideration of the PRODES 120m land cover for the previous year and the year of firedetection. The training data are used with a random forest classifier and remotely sensed predictor variables including the number of MODIS Aqua and Terra satellite detections, the maximum and median Fire Radiative Power (FRP) [MW km-2], the scaling parameter of the FRP power law distribution, the number of day and night detections, and the fire surrounding "background" surface brightness temperature [K]. In addition, the total rainfall over periods from 1 to 24 months prior to fire

We present a generalization of the forest-fire model of P. Bak et al. by including the immunity g which is the probability that a tree is not ignited although one of its neighbors is burning. When g reaches a critical value gc( p), which depends on the tree growth rate p, the fire cannot survive any more, i.e. a continuous phase transition takes place from a steady state with fire to a steady state without fire. We present results of computer simulations and explain them by analytic calculations. The fire spreading at the phase transition represents a new type of percolation which is called “fluctuating site percolation”.

Deforestation and agricultural land uses provide a consistent source of ignitions along the Amazon frontier during the dry season. The risk of understory fires in Amazon forests is amplified by drought conditions, when fires at the forest edge may spread for weeks before rains begin. Fire activity also impacts the regional response of intact forests to drought through diffuse light effects and nutrient redistribution, highlighting the complexity of feedbacks in this coupled human and natural system. This talk will focus on recent advances in our understanding of fire-climate feedbacks in the Amazon, building on research themes initiated under NASA's Large-scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). NASA's LBA program began in the wake of the 1997-1998 El Niño, a strong event that exposed the vulnerability of Amazon forests to drought and fire under current climate and projections of climate change. With forecasts of another strong El Niño event in 2015-2016, this talk will provide a multi-scale synthesis of Amazon forest responses to drought and fire based on field measurements, airborne lidar data, and satellite observations of fires, rainfall, and terrestrial water storage. These studies offer new insights into the mechanisms governing fire season severity in the southern Amazon and regional variability in carbon losses from understory fires. The contributions from remote sensing to our understanding of drought and fire in Amazon forests reflect the legacy of NASA's LBA program and the sustained commitment to interdisciplinary research across the Amazon region.

Forestfire is one of the major phenomena causing degradation of environment, landscape, natural ecosystems, human health and economy. One of the main topic in forestfire data studies deals with the detection, analysis and modelling of spatio-temporal patterns of clustering. Spatial patterns of forestfire locations, their sizes and their sequence in time are of great interest for fire prediction and for forestfire management planning and distribution in optimal way necessary resources. Currently, fires can be analyzed and monitored by using different statistical tools, for example, Ripley's k-function, fractals, Allan factor, scan statistics, etc. Some of them are adapted to temporal or spatial data and are either local or global. In the present study the main attention is paid to the application of geostatistical tools - variography and methods for the analysis of monitoring networks (MN) clustering techniques (topological, statistical and fractal measures), in order to detect and to characterize spatio-temporal forestfire patterns. The main studies performed include: a) analysis of forestfires temporal sequences; b) spatial clustering of forestfires; c) geostatistical spatial analysis of burnt areas. Variography was carried out both for temporal and spatial data. Real case study is based on the forest-fire event data from Canton of Ticino (Switzerland) for a period of 1969 to 2008. The results from temporal analysis show the presence of clustering and seasonal periodicities. Comprehensive analysis of the variograms shows an anisotropy in the direction 30° East-North where smooth changes are detected, while on the direction 30° North-West a greater variability was identified. The research was completed with an application of different MN analysis techniques including, analysis of distributions of distances between events, Morisita Index (MI), fractal dimensions (sandbox counting and box counting methods) and functional fractal dimensions, adapted and

The Forest in steppe present ecological diversity, and seen climatic unfavourable conditions in zone and impact of forestfires; we notes deterioration of physical environment particularly, deterioration of natural forest. This deterioration of forests provokes an unbalance of environment witch provokes a process of deterioration advanced in the ultimate stadium is desertification. By elsewhere, where climatic conditions are favourable, the fire is an ecological and acted agent like integral part of evolution of the ecosystems, the specific regeneration of plants are influenced greatly by the regime of fire (season of fire, intensity, interval), witch leads to the recuperation of the vegetation of meadow- fire. In this survey we used the pictures ALSAT-1 for detection of zones with risk of forestfire and their impact on the naturals forests in region named TLEMCEN in the north west of Algeria. A thematic detailed analysis of forests well attended ecosystems some processing on the picture ALSAT-1, we allowed to identify and classifying the forests in there opinion components flowers. We identified ampleness of fire on this zone also. Some parameters as the slope, the proximity to the road and the forests formations were studied in the goal of determining the zones to risk of forestfire. A crossing of diaper of information in a GIS according to a very determined logic allowed classifying the zones in degree of risk of fire in semi arid zone witch forest zone not encouraging the regeneration but permitting the installation of cash of steppe which encourages the desertification.

Climate-driven changes in the fire regime within boreal forest ecosystems are likely to have important effects on carbon cycling and species composition. In the context of improving fire management options and developing more realistic scenarios of future change, it is important to understand how meteorology regulates different fire processes, including ignition, daily fire spread rates, and cumulative annual burned area. Here we combined MODIS active fires (MCD14ML), MODIS imagery (MOD13A1) and ancillary historic fire perimeter information to produce a dataset of daily fire spread maps of Alaska for the period 2002-2011. This approach provided a spatial and temporally continuous representation of fire progression and a precise identification of ignition and extinction locations and dates for each wildfire. The fire-spread maps were analyzed together with daily vapor pressure deficit (VPD) observations from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) and lightning strikes from the Alaska Lightning Detection Network (ALDN). We found a significant relationship between daily VPD and probability that a lightning strike would develop into a fire ignition. In the first 5 days after ignition, above average VPD increased the probability that fires would grow to large or very large sizes. Strong relationships also were identified between VPD and burned area at several levels of temporal and spatial aggregation. As a consequence of regional coherence in meteorology, ignition, daily fire spread rates, and fire extinction events were often synchronized across different fires in interior Alaska. At a regional scale, the sum of positive VPD anomalies during the fire season was positively correlated with annual burned area during the NARR era (1979-2011; R2 = 0.45). Some of the largest fires we mapped had slow initial growth, indicating opportunities may exist for suppression efforts to adaptively manage these forests for climate change. The results of our spatiotemporal

Understanding how fire-weather danger indices changed in the past, and detecting how changes affected forestfire activity is important in changing climate. We used the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), calculated from two reanalysis datasets, ERA 40 and ERA Interim, to examine the temporal variation of forestfire danger in Europe in 1960-2012. Additionally, we used national forest-fires statistical data from Greece and Spain to relate fire danger and fire activity. There is no obvious trend in fire danger for the time period covered by ERA 40 (1960-1999) whereas for the period 1980-2012 covered by ERA Interim, the mean FWI and the number of high fire risk days shows an increasing trend which is significant at the 99% confidence level for South and East Europe. The cross-correlation calculated at national level in Greece and Spain between mean yearly area burned and mean FWI of the current season is of the order 0.5-0.6, and demonstrates the importance of the fire-season weather on forestfires. Our results show that, fire risk is multifaceted, and factors like changes in fire fighting capacity, ignition patterns, or landscapes might have played a role in forestfires trends. However, weather trends remain as important determinants of forestfires.

Fire is a natural process and the dominant disturbance shaping plant and animal communities in many coniferous forests of the western US. Given that fire size and severity are predicted to increase in the future, it has become increasingly important to understand how wildlife responds to fire and post-fire management. The Angora Fire burned 1243 hectares of mixed conifer forest in South Lake Tahoe, California. We conducted avian point counts for the first 3 years following the fire in burned and unburned areas to investigate which habitat characteristics are most important for re-establishing or maintaining the native avian community in post-fire landscapes. We used a multi-species occurrence model to estimate how avian species are influenced by the density of live and dead trees and shrub cover. While accounting for variations in the detectability of species, our approach estimated the occurrence probabilities of all species detected including those that were rare or observed infrequently. Although all species encountered in this study were detected in burned areas, species-specific modeling results predicted that some species were strongly associated with specific post-fire conditions, such as a high density of dead trees, open-canopy conditions or high levels of shrub cover that occur at particular burn severities or at a particular time following fire. These results indicate that prescribed fire or managed wildfire which burns at low to moderate severity without at least some high-severity effects is both unlikely to result in the species assemblages that are unique to post-fire areas or to provide habitat for burn specialists. Additionally, the probability of occurrence for many species was associated with high levels of standing dead trees indicating that intensive post-fire harvest of these structures could negatively impact habitat of a considerable proportion of the avian community.

Southern Europe is exposed to anthropogenic and natural forestfires. These result in loss of lives, goods and infrastructure, but also deteriorate the natural environment and degrade ecosystems. The early detection and combating of such catastrophes requires the use of a decision support system (DSS) for emergency management. The current literature reports on a series of efforts aimed to deliver DSSs for the management of the forestfires by utilising technologies like remote sensing and geographical information systems (GIS), yet no integrated system exists. This manuscript presents the results of scientific research aiming to the development of a DSS for managing forestfires. The system provides a series of software tools for the assessment of the propagation and combating of forestfires based on Arc/Info, ArcView, Arc Spatial Analyst, Arc Avenue, and Visual C++ technologies. The system integrates GIS technologies under the same data environment and utilises a common user interface to produce an integrated computer system based on semi-automatic satellite image processing (fuel maps), socio-economic risk modelling and probabilistic models that would serve as a useful tool for forestfire prevention, planning and management. Its performance has been demonstrated via real time up-to-date accurate information on the position and evolution of the fire. The system can assist emergency assessment, management and combating of the incident. A site demonstration and validation has been accomplished for the island of Evoia, Greece, an area particularly vulnerable to forestfires due to its ecological characteristics and prevailing wind patterns. PMID:16928418

Forestfires, and fires used for deforestation and agriculture are sporadic. Some may last an hour others several days. It is difficult to find the fires or to estimate their effect on atmospheric pollution without an "eye in the sky" a satellite or an array of satellites that monitors them routinely from space. Since fires have a significant effect on the quality of air that we breath, on the surface vegetation, on clouds and precipitation and even on climate, NASA and other space agencies try to develop fire monitoring capability from space. Presently satellites were not designed to monitor fires. But the AVHRR and GOES satellites were used for fire monitoring. AVHRR is an orbiter that passes over the same area twice a day with detailed observations of fires from a distance of 800 km, GOES is a stationary satellite located above the equator, and observes the larger fires from a distance of 20,000 km. Field experiments, such as the "SCAR-B" experiment in Brazil conducted in 1995 by INPE, NASA and Universities of Sao Paulo, Washington and Wisconsin, were used to determine the ability of satellites to observe fires and the emitted pollution. They are the basis of a new system of satellites designed by NASA to observe fires and pollution, the Earth Observing System AM1 and PM1. NASA plans to use the information for four observations a day of the fires and the emitted smoke. The information can be used to determine the location of the fires, to distinguish between small and large fires and monitor their development. The satellites will measure the emitted smoke and with trajectory models can be used to predict the density and spread of the smoke.

Smoke plumes from forestfires scattered along the border between the Russian Far East and northern China are clearly visible in this true-color image from the Sea-viewing Wide-Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) on June 16, 2000. Fires in Siberia occur every summer, and severe outbreaks occur every ten years or so, with the most recent in 1998. The fires are ignited by lightning, and are so remote that it is impossible to fight them effectively. Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE

The emissions of NOx (defined as NO (nitric oxide) + NO2 (nitrogen dioxide)) and hydrogen cyanide (HCN), per unit amount of fuel burned, from fires in the pine forests that dominate the mountains surrounding Mexico City (MC) are about 2 times higher than normally observed for forest burning. The ammonia (NH3) emissions are about average for forest burning. The upper limit for the mass ratio of NOX to volatile organic compounds (VOC) for these MC-area mountain fires was approximately 0.38, which is similar to the NOx/VOC ratio in the MC urban area emissions inventory of 0.34, but much larger than the NOx/VOC ratio for tropical forestfires in Brazil (approximately 0.068). The nitrogen enrichment in the fire emissions may be due to deposition of nitrogen-containing pollutants in the outflow from the MC urban area. This effect may occur worldwide wherever biomass burning coexists with large urban areas (e.g. the tropics, southeastern US, Los Angeles Basin). The molar emission ratio of HCN to carbon monoxide (CO) for the mountain fires was 0.012 +/- 0.007, which is 2-9 times higher than widely used literature values for biomass burning. The ambient molar ratio HCN/CO in the MC-area outflow is about 0.003 +/- 0.0003. Thus, if only mountain fires emit significant amounts of HCN, these fires may be contributing about 25% of the CO production in the MCarea (approximately 98-100 W and 19-20 N). Comparing the PM10/CO and PM2.5/CO mass ratios in the MC Metropolitan Area emission inventory (0.01 15 and 0.0037) to the PM1/CO mass ratio for the mountain fires (0.133) then suggests that these fires could produce as much as approximately 79-92% of the primary fine particle mass generated in the MC-area. Considering both the uncertainty in the HCN/CO ratios and secondary aerosol formation in the urban and fire emissions implies that about 50 +/- 30% of the "aged" fine particle mass in the March 2006 MC-area outflow could be from these fires.

Two camp directors were interviewed about evacuations from their camps due to forestfires. Topics covered include descriptions of the events; actions taken; aspects of advance planning that proved helpful; unexpected portions of the experience and resultant changes made in plans; relations with outside agencies, the media, and parents; working…

The Mediterranean region is a "hot-spot" of climate change and wildfires, where about 50000 fires burn 500000 hectares every year. However, in spite of the growing concerns of the climate change impacts on Mediterranean wildfires, there are aspects of this topic that remain largely to be investigated. The main scientific objective of this study is to investigate the climate-driven changes on fires in a typical Mediterranean environment (Catalonia, NE of Spain). To achieve this goal, the following specific aims have been identified: (1) Analysis of the recent evolution of fires; (2) Evaluation of the climate-fire relationship; (3) Estimation of the impacts of observed and future climate change. First, we examine a homogeneous series of forestfires in the period 1970-2010. Our analysis shows that both the burned area and number of fire series display a decreasing trend. After the large fires of 1986 and 1994, the increased effort in fire prevention and suppression could explain part of this decreasing trend. Although it is often stated that fires have increased in Mediterranean regions, the higher efficiency in firedetection could have led to spurious trends and misleading conclusions [1]. Secondly, we show that the interannual variability of summer fires is significantly related to antecedent and concurrent climate conditions, highlighting the importance of climate not only in regulating fuel flammability, but also fuel load. On the basis of these results, we develop a simple regression model that produces reliable out-of-sample predictions of the impact of climate variability on summer forestfires [2]. Finally we apply this model to estimate the impacts of observed climate trends on summer fires and the possible fire response to different regional climate change scenarios. We show that a transition toward warmer conditions has already started to occur and it is possible that they continue by mid-century (under the A1B scenario), and that these changes promote

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service completed a feasibility study that examined the potential uses of advanced technology in forestfires mapping and detection. The current and future (1990's) information needs in forestfire management were determined through interviews. Analysis shows that integrated information gathering and processing is needed. The emerging technologies that were surveyed and identified as possible candidates for use in an end to end system include ""push broom'' sensor arrays, automatic georeferencing, satellite communication links, near real or real time image processing, and data integration. Matching the user requirements and the technologies yielded a ""strawman'' system configuration. The feasibility study recommends and outlines the implementation of the next phase for this project, a two year, conceptual design phase to define a system that warrants continued development.

We employ variations of the traditional Drossel-Schwabl cellular automata ForestFire Models (FFM) to study wildfire dynamics. The traditional FFM produces a very robust power law distribution of events, as a function of size, with frequency-size slope very close to -1. Observed data from Australia, the US and northern Mexico suggest that real wild fires closely follow power laws in frequency size with slopes ranging from close to -2 to -1.3 (B.D. Malamud et al. 2005). We suggest two models that, by fracturing and trimming large clusters, reduce the number of large fires while maintaining scale invariance. These fracturing and trimming processes can be justified in terms of real physical processes. For each model, we achieve slopes in the frequency-size relation ranging from approximately -1.77 to -1.06.

A method and apparatus for an incipient firedetection system that receives gaseous samples and measures the light absorption spectrum of the mixture of gases evolving from heated combustibles includes a detector for receiving gaseous samples and subjecting the samples to spectroscopy and determining wavelengths of absorption of the gaseous samples. The wavelengths of absorption of the gaseous samples are compared to predetermined absorption wavelengths. A warning signal is generated whenever the wavelengths of absorption of the gaseous samples correspond to the predetermined absorption wavelengths. The method includes receiving gaseous samples, subjecting the samples to light spectroscopy, determining wavelengths of absorption of the gaseous samples, comparing the wavelengths of absorption of the gaseous samples to predetermined absorption wavelengths and generating a warning signal whenever the wavelengths of absorption of the gaseous samples correspond to the predetermined absorption wavelengths. In an alternate embodiment, the apparatus includes a series of channels fluidically connected to a plurality of remote locations. A pump is connected to the channels for drawing gaseous samples into the channels. A detector is connected to the channels for receiving the drawn gaseous samples and subjecting the samples to spectroscopy. The wavelengths of absorption are determined and compared to predetermined absorption wavelengths is provided. A warning signal is generated whenever the wavelengths correspond.

The risk level of forestfire not only depends on weather, topography, human activities, socio-economic conditions, but is also closely related to the types, growth, moisture content, and quantity of forest fuel on the ground. How to timely acquire information about the growth and moisture content of forest fuel and climate for the whole country is critical to national-level forestfire risk forecasting. The development and application of remote sensing (RS), geographic information system (GIS), databases, internet, and other modern information technologies has provided important technical means for macro-regional forestfire risk forecasting. In this paper, quantified forecasting of national-level forestfire risk was studied using Fuel State Index (FSI) and Background Composite Index (BCI). The FSI was estimated using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiaometer (MODIS) data. National meteorological data and other basic data on distribution of fuel types and forestfire risk rating were standardized in ArcGIS platform to calculate BCI. The FSI and the BCI were used to calculate the ForestFire Danger Index (FFDI), which is regarded as a quantitative indicator for national forestfire risk forecasting and forestfire risk rating, shifting from qualitative description to quantitative estimation. The major forestfires occurred in recent years were taken as examples to validate the above method, and results indicated that the method can be used for quantitative forecasting of national-level forestfire risks.

Forestfires can be studied as point processes where the ignition points represent the set of locations of the observed events in a defined study region. Their spatial and temporal patterns can be characterized by their fractal properties; which quantify the global aspect of the geometry of the support data. However, a monofractal dimension can not completely describe the pattern structure and related scaling properties. Enhancements in fractal theory had developed the multifractal concept which describes the measures from which interlinked fractal sets can be retrieved and characterized by their fractal dimension and singularity strength [1, 2]. The spatial variability of forestfires is conditioned by an intermixture of human, topographic, meteorological and vegetation factors. This heterogeneity makes fire patterns complex scale-invariant processes difficult to be depicted by a single scale. Therefore, this study proposes an exploratory data analysis through a multifractal formalism to characterize and quantify the multiscaling behaviour of the spatial distribution pattern of this phenomenon in a complex region like the Swiss Alps. The studied dataset is represented by 2,401 georeferenced forestfire ignition points in canton Ticino, Switzerland, in a 40-years period from 1969 to 2008. Three multifractal analyses are performed: one assesses the multiscaling behaviour of fire occurrence probability of the support data (raw data) and four random patterns simulated within three different support domains; second analysis studies the multifractal behavior of patterns from anthropogenic and natural ignited fires (arson-, accident- and lightning-caused fires); and third analysis aims at detecting scale-dependency of the size of burned area. To calculate the generalized dimensions, Dq, a generalization of the box counting methods is carried out based on the generalization of Rényi information of the qth order moment of the probability distribution. For q > 0, Dq

From mid-July to mid-October 2005, an environmental disaster unfolded in the trinational region of Madre de Dios, Peru; Acre, Brazil; and Pando, Bolivia (the MAP region), in southwestern Amazonia. A prolonged dry season and human-initiated fires resulted in smoke pollution affecting more than 400,000 persons, fire damage to over 300,000 hectares of rain forest, and over US$50 million of direct economic losses. Indicators suggest that anomalous drought conditions could occur again this year.

This view, acquired with a Hasselblad camera equipped with a 250mm lens, shows only a small portion of forestfires that marked the Earth photography taken over Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina during this mission. Numerous fires are visible in this late-dry-season scene of the areas between the Parana and Uruguay Rivers. Most of this burning is usually associated with agricultural preparations. The nadir point of the Space Shuttle at the time this photograph was taken (2018 GMT, September 16, 1993) was 28.5 degrees South, 60.0 degrees West. The view is to the west.

Fire activity in the Alaskan boreal forest, though episodic at annual and intra-annual time scales, has experienced an increase over the last several decades. Increases in burned area and fire severity are not only releasing more carbon to the atmosphere, but likely shifting vegetation composition in the region towards greater deciduous dominance and a reduction in coniferous stands. While some recent studies have addressed qualitative differences between large and small fire years in the Alaskan boreal forest, the ecological effects of a greater proportion of burning occurring during large fire years and during late season fires have not yet been examined. Some characteristics of wildfires that can be detected remotely are related to fire severity and can provide new information on spatial and temporal patterns of burning. This analysis focused on boreal wildfire intensity (fire radiative power, or FRP) contained in the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) daily active fire product from 2003 to 2010. We found that differences in FRP resulted from seasonality and intra-annual variability in fire activity levels, vegetation composition, latitudinal variation, and fire spread behavior. Our studies determined two general categories of active firedetections: new detections associated with the spread of the fire front and residual pixels in areas that had already experienced front burning. Residual pixels had a lower average FRP than front pixels, but represented a high percentage of all pixels during periods of high fire activity (large fire years, late season burning, and seasonal periods of high fire activity). As a result, the FRP from periods of high fire activity was less intense than those from periods of low fire activity. Differences related to latitude were greater than expected, with higher latitudes burning later in the season and at a higher intensity than lower latitudes. Differences in vegetation type indicate that coniferous vegetation

Ecological discussions concerning alternative stable states theory suggest that tropical forest ecosystems could shift to qualitatively different alternative states upon catastrophic disturbances which exceed forest resilience. In this regard, it is expected that changes in the fire regime facilitated by climate and land use alterations could lead to rapid forest cover loss, creating conditions likely to push tropical forests to tipping points, beyond which forest resilience is lost. However, there is a dearth of empirical examples of fire-driven alternative stable states involving tropical forests. Key among the constraints for this scarcity are the requirements for large scale disturbances and long-term data, both of which are scarce. However, in the West African tropical forest (referred to as the Upper Guinean forest, UGF) a number of protected areas were impacted by large fire events during the 1980s El Niño-driven droughts, providing an opportunity for testing hypotheses concerning alternative stable states in tropical forest ecosystems. This paper aims to demonstrate fire-driven alternative stable states in the deciduous forest zone of the UGF by analyzing fire activity and forest recovery in fire-impacted forest reserves. We analyzed historical Landsat and MODIS imagery to map and quantify vegetation cover change, fire frequency and fire severity patterns. Our analyses suggest that the historic fires in the 1980s were catastrophic enough to remove forest canopy, thereby triggering a landscape-scale alternative stable states. Forest cover declined substantially becoming replaced by a novel ecosystem with low tree density. Our results also indicate the establishment of a positive fire-vegetation feedback effect, such that the new vegetation which displaced severely burned forests is more pyrogenic and maintained through frequent burns. This study expands our knowledge on the vulnerability of tropical forest ecosystems to state transitions in response to fire

We present a very simple "impact" model for the description of forestfires and show that it can mimic the known characteristics of wild fire regimes in savannas, boreal forests, and Mediterranean forests. Moreover, the distribution of burned biomasses in model generated fires resemble those of burned areas in numerous large forests around the world. The model has also the merits of being the first second-order model for forestfires and the first example of the use of impact models in the study of ecosystems. PMID:16723147

CO2-normalized emission ratios for carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), methane (CH4), total nonmethane hydrocarbons (TNMHC), and nitrous oxide (N2O) were determined from smoke samples collected during low-altitude helicopter flights over two prescribed fires in northern Ontario, Canada. The emission ratios determined from these prescribed boreal forestfires are compared to emission ratios determined over two graminoid (grass) wetlands fires in central Florida and are found to be substantially higher (elevated levels of reduced gas production relative to CO2) during all stages of combustion. These results argue strongly for the need to characterize biomass burning emissions from the major global vegetation/ecosystems in order to couple combustion emissions to their vegetation/ecosystem type.

On August 14, 2005, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured this stunning image of forestfires raging across the width of Alaska. Smoke from scores of fires (marked in red) filled the state's broad central valley and poured out to sea. Hemmed in by mountains to the north and the south, the smoke spreads westward and spills out over the Bering and Chukchi Seas (image left). More than a hundred fires were burning across the state as of August 14. Air quality warnings have been issued for about 90 percent of the Interior, according to the August 12 report from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's Division of Air Quality. Conditions have ranged from 'very unhealthy' to 'hazardous' over the weekend in many locations, including Fairbanks. A large area of high atmospheric pressure spread over much of the state, keeping temperatures high and reducing winds that would clear the air.

Forestfires are a major environmental problem in North East Region (NER) with large tracts of forest areas being affected in every season. Forestfires have become a major threat to the forest ecosystems in the region, leading to loss of timber, biodiversity, wildlife habitat and loss to other natural resources. Studies on forestfire have reported that about 50% of forestfire in the country takes place in NE region. The forestfire in NER is anthropogenic in nature. The forestfire hazard map generated based on appropriate weightage given to the factors affecting fire behavior like topography, fuel characteristic and proximity to roads, settlements and also historical fire locations helped to demarcate the fire prone zones. Whereas, during fire season the weather pattern also governs the fire spread in the given area. Therefore, various data on fuel characteristics (land use/land cover, forest type map, forest density map), topography (DEM, slope, aspect) proximity to settlement, road, waterbodies, meteorological data from AWS on wind speed, wind direction, dew point have been used for each fire point to rank its possible hazard level. Near real time fire location data obtained from MODIS/FIRMSwere used to generate the fire alerts. This work demonstrates dissemination of information in the form of maps and tables containing information of latitude and longitude of fire location, fire occurrence date, state and district name, LULC, road connectivity, slope and aspect, settlements/water bodies and meteorological data and the corresponding rating of possibility of fire spread to the respective fire control authorities during fire season.

The Algerian forests are characterized by a particularly flammable material and fuel. The wind, the relief and the slope facilitates the propagation of fire. The use of remote sensing data multi-­dates, combined with other types of data of various kinds on the environment and forest burned, opens up interesting perspectives for the management of post-­fire regeneration. In this study the use of multi-­temporal remote sensing image Alsat-­1 and Landsat combined with other types of data concerning both background and burned down forest appears to be promising in evaluating and spatial and temporal effects of post fire regeneration. A spatial analysis taking into consideration the characteristics of the burned down site in the North West of Algeria, allowed to better account new factors to explain the regeneration and its temporal and spatial variation. We intended to show the potential use of remote sensing data from satellite ALSAT-­1, of spatial resolution of 32 m. . This approach allows showing the contribution of the data of Algerian satellite ALSAT in the detection and the well attended some forestfires in Algeria.

During the past two years, forestfires in the western United States have been analyzed and discussed in depth because of the severity of the fires and the associated damage to personal property. The number and extent of forestfires has been increasing, and many scientists believe that this increase will continue in the future. Forest management practices have been under close inspection because of their role in contributing to the current situation and the potential impact of management changes on fire mitigation and control. Industrialists and conservationists debate whether management (ie. road building, timber extraction, fire suppression) or conservation (ie. no new roads or logging) results in fewer fires that burn lesser extents. One example of a federal change in forest management practice is the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, enacted in 2001, which prohibited road construction in roadless National Forests. Opposition to the Rule is based in part on the assumption that roadless National Forests are more prone to forestfires, or conversely, managed forests are less prone to forestfires. Our analysis using data from the U.S. Forest Service Historic Fire Database and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite instrument contradicts this view. We found that average annual fire frequency during the period 1986 to 2000 was 10% lower in roadless forests than in managed forests and that average annual burn extent was 31% lower in roadless forest. Thus, opening roadless forest to road construction in the western U.S. is sure to lead to an increase in number and extent of forestfires in the region.

Determination of charcoal accumulation rate in lacustrine sediments allows to reconstruct the fire history of the region surrounding the lake. Our studies have been achieved in three Amazonian sites and one site in Atlantic rainforest. Charcoal fragments are identified and counted under a microscope. Typical size of these charcoals is around ten micrometers and they probably have been subject to eolian transport. The highest charcoal accumulation rates were obtained in sediments from Middle Holocene in Carajás region, eastern Amazonia. These rates are on the same order than the present day charcoal accumulation rate in Alta Floresta, a region of Amazonia which is being submited to intense slash and burn. The lowest values were found in Lagoa da Pata in Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, a very humid area in western Amazon. We observed from the D. Helvécio record, in the Atlantic rainforest, fire occurrences from 8,400 to 6,400 cal years BP. For Carajás lake, surrounded by tropical rain forest, we had identified fires during the period between 8,000 and 5,300 cal years BP. Finally, the lake Caracarana, which is surrounded by grass savanna, showed a record of main fire occurrence phase at 9,750 cal yrs BP and a second phase marked by charcoal peaks at 7,680, 6,990 and 6,460 cal yrs BP. The synchronism of the fire occurrence periods in different Brazilian regions is related to the Middle Holocene dry climate phase provoked by the low summer insolation. Differences in the accumulation rates can be attributed to differences in biomass availability and fire return time. The carbon released in the atmosphere by this fires must have contributed to the observed increase of CO2, poorer in 13C, during the middle Holocene.

Burning potentially can occur on major part of lands of Ukraine (total 57.93 million ha) and, first of all, on agricultural ones - that occupy 71% of total area of the country. Forests occupy 17.6% of the area of country, where from 2 to 4 thousands fires happens annually. Good wildfire statistics, as well as proper fire management system only for part of forest lands of Ukraine - 68% is established, in particularly, for forests that managed by State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine. While other 2 million ha of forests that managed by other Ministries are out of regular fire management action, detection and protection. There are no reliable detection and accounting of wildfires, outdated or absent fire engines, lack of fire crews and facilities on most part of agricultural, grass, abandoned lands, pastures. During emergency wildfires situation in Ukraine in August 2010 only full mobilization of forest personal together with forces of internal affairs (police) for patrolling of wildfire situation nationwide allows to avoid catastrophic scenario in spite of general low preparedness and unsatisfactory technical provision of fire management on agricultural lands. That year in forest lands totally 3065 cases of fires were registered with total area burned 8916 ha (fire season 2010) and 3145 cases of wildfires on agricultural lands (August 2010). There are no reliable statistics and effective fire management system on grass and agricultural lands in Ukraine even agricultural fires burned much larger area of lands then forestfires and produce significant amount of black carbon both during spring and summer fire events. Results of analysis of wildfire cases in Ukraine at 1x1 km spatial resolution for the period 2006-2008 based on active detection of thermals anomaly by MODIS shows that annually, during the period nearly 20,000 cases of wildfires were detected. In extreme years like 2008, amount of fires doubled. Wildfires in Ukraine make important input in total

An integrated forestfiredetection and mapping system that will be based upon technology available in the 1990s was defined. Uncertainties in emerging and advanced technologies related to the conceptual design were identified and recommended for inclusion as preferred system components. System component technologies identified for an end-to-end system include thermal infrared, linear array detectors, automatic georeferencing and signal processing, geosynchronous satellite communication links, and advanced data integration and display. Potential system configuration options were developed and examined for possible inclusion in the preferred system configuration. The preferred system configuration will provide increased performance and be cost effective over the system currently in use. Forestfire management user requirements and the system component emerging technologies were the basis for the system configuration design. A preferred system configuration was defined that warrants continued refinement and development, examined economic aspects of the current and preferred system, and provided preliminary cost estimates for follow-on system prototype development.

Mega-fires are often defined according to their size and intensity but are more accurately described by their socioeconomic impacts. Three factors – climate change, fire exclusion, and antecedent disturbance, collectively referred to as the “mega-fire triangle” – likely contribute to today's mega-fires. Some characteristics of mega-fires may emulate historical fire regimes and can therefore sustain healthy fire-prone ecosystems, but other attributes decrease ecosystem resiliency. A good example of a program that seeks to mitigate mega-fires is located in Western Australia, where prescribed burning reduces wildfire intensity while conserving ecosystems. Crown-fire-adapted ecosystems are likely at higher risk of frequent mega-fires as a result of climate change, as compared with other ecosystems once subject to frequent less severe fires. Fire and forest managers should recognize that mega-fires will be a part of future wildland fire regimes and should develop strategies to reduce their undesired impacts.

The increasing frequency of large, high-severity fires threatens the survival of old-growth specialist fauna in fire-prone forests. Within topographically diverse montane forests, areas that experience less severe or fewer fires compared with those prevailing in the landscape may present unique resource opportunities enabling old-growth specialist fauna to survive. Statistical landscape models that identify the extent and distribution of potential fire refuges may assist land managers to incorporate these areas into relevant biodiversity conservation strategies. We used a case study in an Australian wet montane forest to establish how predictive fire simulation models can be interpreted as management tools to identify potential fire refuges. We examined the relationship between the probability of fire refuge occurrence as predicted by an existing fire refuge model and fire severity experienced during a large wildfire. We also examined the extent to which local fire severity was influenced by fire severity in the surrounding landscape. We used a combination of statistical approaches, including generalized linear modeling, variogram analysis, and receiver operating characteristics and area under the curve analysis (ROC AUC). We found that the amount of unburned habitat and the factors influencing the retention and location of fire refuges varied with fire conditions. Under extreme fire conditions, the distribution of fire refuges was limited to only extremely sheltered, fire-resistant regions of the landscape. During extreme fire conditions, fire severity patterns were largely determined by stochastic factors that could not be predicted by the model. When fire conditions were moderate, physical landscape properties appeared to mediate fire severity distribution. Our study demonstrates that land managers can employ predictive landscape fire models to identify the broader climatic and spatial domain within which fire refuges are likely to be present. It is essential

Forest understory fires are an increasingly important cause of forest impoverishment in Ammonia, but little is known of the landscape characteristics and climatic phenomena that determine their occurrence. We developed empirical functions relating the occurrence of understory fires to landscape features near Paragominas, a 35- yr-old ranching and logging center in eastern Ammonia. An historical sequence of maps of forest understory fire was created based on field interviews With local farmers and Landsat TM images. Several landscape features that might explain spatial variations in the occurrence of understory fires were also mapped and co-registered for each of the sample dates, including: forest fragment size and shape, forest impoverishment through logging and understory fires, source of ignition (settlements and charcoal pits), roads, forest edges, and others. The spatial relationship between forest understory fire and each landscape characteristic was tested by regression analyses. Fire probability models were then developed for various combinations of landscape characteristics. The analyses were conducted separately for years of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which are associated with severe drought in eastern Amazonia, and non-ENS0 years. Most (91 %) of the forest area that burned during the 10-yr sequence caught fire during ENSO years, when severe drought may have increased both forest flammability and the escape of agricultural management fires. Forest understory fires were associated with forest edges, as reported in previous studies from Ammonia. But the strongest predictor of forestfire was the percentage of the forest fragment that had been previously logged or burned. Forest fragment size, distance to charcoal pits, distance to agricultural settlement, proximity to forest edge, and distance to roads were also correlated with forest understory fire. Logistic regression models using information on fragment degradation and distance to ignition

Boreal forests contribute 9% of current annual fire emissions and contain nearly 40% of the world's terrestrial carbon stocks. Temperatures are projected to increase by the greatest magnitudes in high latitudes and lead to increased frequencies of forestfires. However, because of variations in climate and species-driven forest structure, fire regimes of North American and Eurasian boreal forests are distinctly different. These differences are generally not accounted for in global models. We quantified variations in fire and burn severity between the two continents using MODIS fire radiative power, differenced Normalized Burn Ratio, and spring albedo. These metrics suggest that Eurasian boreal fires are on average less than half as severe as those in North America. We examine how boreal forestfires may respond to 21st century climate change using the Community Land Model, and consider how these regimes may feed back to climate through fire-emitted aerosols, greenhouse gas fluxes, and land surface characteristics.

The West African tropical forest (referred to as the Upper Guinean forest, UGF), is a global biodiversity hotspot providing vital ecosystem services for the region's socio-economic and environmental wellbeing. It is also one of the most fragmented and human-modified tropical forest ecosystems, with the only remaining large patches of original forests contained in protected areas. However, these remnant forests are susceptible to continued fire-mediated degradation and forest loss due to intense climatic, demographic and land use pressures. We analyzed human and climatic drivers of fire activity in the sub-region to better understand the spatial and temporal patterns of these risks. We utilized MODIS active fire and burned area products to identify fire activity within the sub-region. We measured climatic variability using TRMM rainfall data and derived indicators of human land use from a variety of geospatial datasets. We used a boosted regression trees model to determine the influences of predictor variables on fire activity. Our analyses indicated that the spatial and temporal variability of precipitation is a key driving factor of fire activity in the UGF. Anthropogenic effects on fire activity in the area were evident through the influences of agriculture and low-density populations. These human footprints in the landscape make forests more susceptible to fires through forest fragmentation, degradation, and fire spread from agricultural areas. Forested protected areas within the forest savanna mosaic experienced frequent fires, whereas the more humid forest areas located in the south and south-western portions of the study area had fewer fires as these rainforests tend to offer some buffering against fire encroachment. These results improve characterization of UGF fire regime and expand our understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of tropical forestfires in response to human and climatic pressures.

The Forest in steppe present ecological diversity, and seen climatic unfavourable conditions in zone and impact of forestfires; we notes deterioration of physical environment particularly, deterioration of natural forest. This deterioration of forests provokes an unbalance of environment witch provokes a process of deterioration advanced in the ultimate stadium is desertification. By elsewhere, where climatic conditions are favourable, the fire is an ecological and acted agent like integral part of evolution of the ecosystems, the specific regeneration of plants are influenced greatly by the regime of fire (season of fire, intensity, interval), who leads to the recuperation of the vegetation of meadow- fire. In this survey we used the pictures ALSAT-1 for detection of zones with risk of forestfire and their impact on the naturals forests in region of Tlemcen. A thematic detailed analysis of forests well attended ecosystems some processing on the picture ALSAT-1, we allowed to identify and classifying the forests in there opinion components flowers. we identified ampleness of fire on this zone also. Some parameters as the slope, the proximity to the road and the forests formations were studied in the goal of determining the zones to risk of forestfire. A crossing of diaper of information in a SIG according to a very determined logic allowed to classify the zones in degree of risk of fire in a middle arid in a forest zone not encouraging the regeneration on the other hand permitting the installation of cash of steppe which encourages the desertification.

Fire is the main ecological disturbance controlling forest development in the boreal forests of Siberia and contributing substantially to the global carbon cycle. The warmer and dryer climate observed recently in the boreal forests is considered to be responsible for extreme fire weather, resulting in higher fire frequency, larger areas burned, and an increase of fire severity. Because of the increase of fire activity, boreal forests in some regions may not be able to reach maturity before they re-burn, which means less carbon will be stored in the ecosystem and more will remain in the atmosphere. Moreover, if one fire occurs within a few years of another, some stands will not re-grow at all, and even more carbon will accumulate in the atmosphere. Zabaikalye region located in the south of Siberia is characterized by the highest fire activity in Russia. With a use of the satellite-based fire product we found that there are about 7.0 million hectares in the region burned repeatedly during the last decade. We have investigated a number of sites in-situ in light-coniferous (Scots pine and larch) forests and evaluated the impacts of repeated fires on fuel loads, carbon emissions, and tree regeneration. Substantial decrease of carbon stocks, change of the vegetation structure and composition, and soil erosion were observed in many areas disturbed by repeated fires. At drier sites located in the southern regions repeated fires prohibited successful regeneration and resulted in forest conversion to grassland. Detection and monitoring of changes in the areas of Siberia where repeated fires have caused a major shift in ecosystem structure and function is required for the development of sustainable forest management strategies to mitigate climate change. The research was supported by NASA LCLUC Program.

During the summer of 2010, widespread forest and peatland fires in western Russia burned over hundreds of thousands of hectares, burning over croplands, destroying hundreds of homes, and directly causing the death of more than 50 people. Unprecedented drought conditions, combined with an extended heat wave, resulted in extreme fire danger conditions and explosive fire behavior in a region of Russia not noted for large fires. Several fires exhibited pyroconvection, injecting smoke directly into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, while deep-burning fires created major regional smoke problems. This smoke persisted in the heavily-populated areas around Moscow, exposing millions to high levels of ozone and particulate matter, and creating both immediate and longer-term health risks. This presentation will explore the drought conditions leading to the catastrophic fire behavior experienced in western Russia, and analyze fire behavior in terms of fuel consumption, smoke production, fire intensity levels, and pyroconvection. Impacts of regional and long-range smoke transport will also be discussed.

We describe a climate mode synchronizing forest carbon losses from North and South America by analyzing time series of tropical North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs), landfall hurricanes and tropical storms, and Amazon fires during 1995-2013. Years with anomalously high tropical North Atlantic SSTs during March-June were often followed by a more active hurricane season and a larger number of satellite-detectedfires in the southern Amazon during June-November. The relationship between North Atlantic tropical cyclones and southern Amazon fires (r = 0.61, p < 0.003) was stronger than links between SSTs and either cyclones or fires alone, suggesting that fires and tropical cyclones were directly coupled to the same underlying atmospheric dynamics governing tropical moisture redistribution. These relationships help explain why seasonal outlook forecasts for hurricanes and Amazon fires both failed in 2013 and may enable the design of improved early warning systems for drought and fire in Amazon forests.

Inspection and testing guidelines go beyond the 'Code of Federal Regulation'. Title 30 of the US Code of Federal Regulations (30 CFR) contains requirements and references to national standards for inspection, testing and maintenance of fire suppression and detection equipment for mine operators. However, federal requirements have not kept pace with national standards and best practices. The article lists National Fire Protection (NFPA) standards that are referenced by the US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 30 CFR. It then discusses other NFPA Standards excluded from 30 CFR and explains the NFPA standard development process. 2 refs., 3 tabs., 5 photos.

The Joint Fire Science Program established 14 regional fire science knowledge exchange consortia to improve the delivery of fire science information and communication among fire managers and researchers. Consortia were developed regionally to ensure that fire science information is tailored to meet regional needs. In this paper, emphasis was placed on the Oak Woodlands and ForestsFire Consortium to provide an inside view of how one regional consortium is organized and its experiences in sharing fire science through various social media, conference, and workshop-based fire science events.

Following forestfires, peak flows in perennial and ephemeral streams often increase by a factor of 10 or more. This increase in peak flow rate may overwhelm existing downstream structures, such as road culverts, causing serious damage to road fills at stream crossings. In order to predict peak flow rates following wildfires, we have applied two different tools. One is based on the U.S.D.A Natural Resource Conservation Service Curve Number Method (CN), and the other is by applying the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) to the watershed. In our presentation, we will describe the science behind the two methods, and present the main variables for each model. We will then provide an example of a comparison of the two methods to a fire-prone watershed upstream of the City of Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, where a fire spread model was applied for current fuel loads, and for likely fuel loads following a fuel reduction treatment. When applying the curve number method, determining the time to peak flow can be problematic for low severity fires because the runoff flow paths are both surface and through shallow lateral flow. The WEPP watershed version incorporates shallow lateral flow into stream channels. However, the version of the WEPP model that was used for this study did not have channel routing capabilities, but rather relied on regression relationships to estimate peak flows from individual hillslope polygon peak runoff rates. We found that the two methods gave similar results if applied correctly, with the WEPP predictions somewhat greater than the CN predictions. Later releases of the WEPP model have incorporated alternative methods for routing peak flows that need to be evaluated.

Fire is a natural, dynamic process that is integral to maintaining ecosystem function. The reintroduction of fire (e.g., prescribed fire, managed wildfire) is a critical management tool for protecting many frequent-fireforests against stand-replacing fires while restoring an essential ecological process. Understanding the effects of fire on forests and wildlife communities is important in natural resource planning efforts. Small mammals are key components of forest food webs and essential to ecosystem function. To investigate the relationship of fire to small mammal assemblages, we live trapped small mammals in 10 burned and 10 unburned forests over 2 years in the central Sierra Nevada, California. Small mammal abundance was higher in unburned forests, largely reflecting the greater proportion of closed-canopy species such as Glaucomys sabrinus in unburned forests. The most abundant species across the entire study area was the highly adaptable generalist species, Peromyscus maniculatus. Species diversity was similar between burned and unburned forests, but burned forests were characterized by greater habitat heterogeneity and higher small mammal species evenness. The use and reintroduction of fire to maintain a matrix of burn severities, including large patches of unburned refugia, creates a heterogeneous and resilient landscape that allows for fire-sensitive species to proliferate and, as such, may help maintain key ecological functions and diverse small mammal assemblages.

"Forest health" is an important concept often not covered in tree, forest, insect, or fungal ecology and biology. With minimal, inexpensive equipment, students can investigate and conduct their own forest health survey to assess the percentage of trees with natural or artificial wounds or stress. Insects and diseases in the forest are…

Wildfire activity is projected to increase in boreal forests as a result of climate warming. The consequences of increased wildfire activity for soil carbon (C) storage in boreal forests may depend on the sensitivity of soil microbes to fire severity, but microbial responses to boreal forestfire severity are not well known. Here, we combine remote sensing of fire severity and field sampling to characterize the response of soil microbial biomass per g soil, microbial respiration of CO2 per g soil, and fungal groups to fire severity in a boreal forest ecosystem. We used remote sensing measurements of differenced normalized burn ratio from Landsat as a measure of fire severity. Our results demonstrate that fire severity controls soil microbial responses to boreal forestfires. In comparison to unburned stands, burned stands had a 52% and 56% reduction in soil microbial biomass and basal respiration, respectively. Within burned stands, we found that microbial biomass and basal respiration significantly declined with increasing fire severity. In addition, mycorrhizal taxa and basidiomycetes displayed particularly low tolerances for severe fire. Although wildfires result in the immediate loss of soil C, our study provides evidence that decreases in microbial biomass and respiration following high severity fires may reduce the capacity of the soil microbial community to decompose soil C over longer time scales. Therefore, models of C cycle responses to climate warming may need to represent the sensitivity of microbial biomass and fungal community composition to fire severity in boreal forests.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service completed a conceptual design study that defined an integrated forestfiredetection and mapping system that will be based upon technology available in the 1990s. Potential system configuration options in emerging and advanced technologies related to the conceptual design were identified and recommended for inclusion as preferred system components. System component technologies identified for an end-to-end system include airborne mounted, thermal infrared (IR) linear array detectors, automatic onboard georeferencing and signal processing, geosynchronous satellite communications links, and advanced data integration and display. Potential system configuration options were developed and examined for possible inclusion in the preferred system configuration. The preferred system configuration will provide increased performance and be cost effective over the system currently in use. Forestfire management user requirements and the system component emerging technologies were the basis for the system configuration design. The conceptual design study defined the preferred system configuration that warrants continued refinement and development, examined economic aspects of the current and preferred system, and provided preliminary cost estimates for follow-on system prototype development.

In 2006, the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) project began a cooperative effort between the US Forest Service (USFS) and the U.S.Geological Survey (USGS) to map and assess burn severity all large fires that have occurred in the United States since 1984. Using Landsat imagery, MTBS is mandated to map wildfire and prescribed fire that meet specific size criteria: greater than 1000 acres in the west and 500 acres in the east, regardless of ownership. Relying mostly on federal and state fire occurrence records, over 15,300 individual fires have been mapped. While mapping recorded fires, an additional 2,700 "unknown" or undocumented fires were discovered and assessed. It has become apparent that there are perhaps thousands of undocumented fires in the US that are yet to be mapped. Fire occurrence records alone are inadequate if MTBS is to provide a comprehensive accounting of fire across the US. Additionally, the sheer number of fires to assess has overwhelmed current manual procedures. To address these problems, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Applied Sciences Program is helping to fund the efforts of the USGS and its MTBS partners (USFS, National Park Service) to develop, and implement a system to automatically identify fires using satellite data. In near real time, USGS will combine active fire satellite detections from MODIS, AVHRR and GOES satellites with Landsat acquisitions. Newly acquired Landsat imagery will be routinely scanned to identify freshly burned area pixels, derive an initial perimeter and tag the burned area with the satellite date and time of detection. Landsat imagery from the early archive will be scanned to identify undocumented fires. Additional automated fire assessment processes will be developed. The USGS will develop these processes using open source software packages in order to provide freely available tools to local land managers providing them with the capability to assess fires at the local level.

Forestfires are an ancient phenomenon. Appear, however, with devastating frequency and intensity over the last 30 years. In our country, the climatic conditions in combination with the intense relief, favor their rapid spread. Considering the fact that environmental conditions provided for decades even worse (increased temperature, drought and vegetation), then the problem of forestfires in our country, is expected to become more intense. The work focuses on the optimization model of the opening up of the forest mountain areas taking into account the prevention and suppression of forestfires. Research area is the mountain forest complex of W. Nestos of Drama Prefecture. The percentage of forest protection area is examined under the light whether the total hose length corresponds to the actual operational capacity to reach a fire source. For this reason are decided to present a three case study concerning area of the forest being protected by fire extinguishing vehicles. The first one corresponds to a fire suppression bandwidth (buffer zone) with a capacity radius of 150m uphill and 250m downhill from the origin point where the fire extinguishing vehicle stands. The second one corresponds to a fire suppression capacity of 200m uphill and 400m downhill and the third one corresponds to a fire suppression capacity of 300m uphill and 500m downhill. The most important forest technical infrastructures to prevent fire are roads network (opening up) for fire protection and buffer zones. Patrols of small and agile 4 × 4 appropriately equipped (pipe length of 500 meters and putting pressure on uphill to 300 meters) for the first attack of the fire in the summer months coupled with early warning of fire observatories adequately cover the forest protection of W. Nestos complex. But spatial distribution needed improvements to a road density of the optimum economic Dec, both forest protection and for better management (skidding) of woody capital.

The temporal-spatial planning of activities for a territorial fire management program requires knowing the value of forest ecosystems. In this paper we extend to and apply the economic valuation principle to the concept of economic vulnerability and present a methodology for the economic valuation of the forest production ecosystems. The forest vulnerability is analyzed from criteria intrinsically associated to the forest characterization, and to the potential behavior of surface fires. Integrating a mapping process of fire potential and analytical valuation algorithms facilitates the implementation of fire prevention planning. The availability of cartography of economic vulnerability of the forest ecosystems is fundamental for budget optimization, and to help in the decision making process. PMID:22343614

Forestfires are a major contributor of gaseous and particulate compounds to the atmosphere, impairing air quality and affecting human health. A new forestfire emissions module was developed and integrated into the European ForestFire Information System (EFFIS), which systematically compiles, since 2000, series of burnt area statistics mapped from satellite imagery. This new forestfire emission model was built on classical methodologies of fuel-map based emission estimation that were improved, especially on burning efficiency, fuel consumption estimation and emission factors. It makes the best use of EFFIS near-real time and detailed information on forestfires, mainly concerning products with a high temporal resolution, which is needed to simulate smoke dispersion and chemical transformation in the atmosphere.

Forestfires are one of the natural disasters that causes more damages in nature, as well as high material costs, and sometimes, a significant losses in human lives. In summer season, when high temperatures are attained, fire may rapidly progress and destroy vast areas of forest and also rural and urban areas. The forestfires have effect on forest species, forest composition and structure, soil properties and soil capacity for nutrient retention. In order to minimize the negative impact of the forestfires in the environment, many studies have been developed, e.g. Jordán et al (2009), Cerdà & Jordán (2010), and Gonçalves & Vieira (2013). Nowadays, Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies are used as support tools in fire management decisions, namely during the fire, but also before and after. This study presents the development of a user-friendly WebGIS dedicated to share data, maps and provide updated information on forestfire management for stakeholders in Iberia Peninsula. The WebGIS platform was developed with ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS for Desktop; HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Javascript. This platform has a database that includes spatial and alphanumeric information, such as: origin, burned areas, vegetation change over time, terrain natural slope, land use, soil erosion and fire related hazards. The same database contains also the following relevant information: water sources, forest tracks and traffic ways, lookout posts and urban areas. The aim of this study is to provide the authorities with a tool to assess risk areas and manage more efficiently forestfire hazards, giving more support to their decisions and helping the populations when facing this kind of phenomena.

Widespread occurrence of fires in Amazonian forests is known to be associated with extreme droughts, but historical data on the location and extent of forestfires are fundamental to determining the degree to which climate conditions and droughts have affected fire occurrence in the region. We used remote sensing to derive a 23-year time series of annual landscape-level burn scars in a fragmented forest of the eastern Amazon. Our burn scar data set is based on a new routine developed for the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System (CLAS), called CLAS-BURN, to calculate a physically based burn scar index (BSI) with an overall accuracy of 93% (Kappa coefficient 0.84). This index uses sub-pixel cover fractions of photosynthetic vegetation, non-photosynthetic vegetation, and shade/burn scar spectral end members. From 23 consecutive Landsat images processed with the CLAS-BURN algorithm, we quantified fire frequencies, the variation in fire return intervals, and rates of conversion of burned forest to other land uses in a 32 400 km2 area. From 1983 to 2007, 15% of the forest burned; 38% of these burned forests were subsequently deforested, representing 19% of the area cleared during the period of observation. While 72% of the fire-affected forest burned only once during the 23-year study period, 20% burned twice, 6% burned three times, and 2% burned four or more times, with the maximum of seven times. These frequencies suggest that the current fire return interval is 5-11 times more frequent than the estimated natural fire regime. Our results also quantify the substantial influence of climate and extreme droughts caused by a strong El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the extent and likelihood of returning forestfires mainly in fragmented landscapes. These results are an important indication of the role of future warmer climate and deforestation in enhancing emissions from more frequently burned forests in the Amazon. PMID:22073631

' grand scheme of vegetational climax-created soon after Davis's model of landform development-can be evaluated in terms of modern knowledge. Disillusion with the climax model paralleled disillusion with Davis's model in the 1950's, but the climax model can be tested, because the record of vegetational history is accessible, datable, and decipherable. In the short term of a few decades, successional vegetation stages occur in variety of situations, as confirmed by observation or by techniques such as tree-ring analysis. The successional vegetation stages are reactions to nutrients, weather, competition, and consumption. Such succession implies long-term disequilibrium, or at least unidirectional development. The long-term controlling factor in Clements' model of vegetation development is climate. With climatic stability the succession will proceed to a climax. In the Appalachian Mountains, geomorphic, microclimatic, and edaphic conditions limit climax development, producing a polyclimax, which is generally sustained by the dominance of these factors. Death and regeneration of single forest trees is controlled mostly by windstorms. The distributional pattern may be locally transected by lightning fires, major windstorms, or washouts. However, the long-term stability of Appalachian forests is demonstrated by pollen stratigraphy. Although we can infer the long-term stability of Appalachian forests, the trends and mechanics of short-term vegetational succession are not fully understood, because lack of sizable areas of virgin forest limits investigations of natural conditions. In this respect, the eastern United States is already much like western Europe, where climatic and disturbance factors in vegetational history cannot be disentangled. In the Great Lakes region, a large area of virgin forest exists in the BWCA of northeastern Minnesota. Here short- and long-term studies show that for at least 9000 years the principal stabilizing factor has been the frequent occurrence of

Fire is a common phenomenon in Mediterranean landscapes and it plays a crucial role in its transformations, making the determination of its impact on the ecosystem essential for land management. During summer of 2012, a wildfire took place in Algarve, Portugal, on an area mainly covered by sclerophyllous vegetation (39.44%, 10080ha), broad-leaved forest (20.80%, 5300ha), agriculture land with significant areas of natural vegetation (17.40%, 4400ha) and transitional woodlands-shrubs (16.17%, 4100ha). The objective of the study was to determine fire severity in order to plan post-fire treatments and to aid vegetation recovery and land reclamation. Satellite imagery was used to estimate burn severity by detecting physical and ecological changes in the landscape caused by fire. Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (DNBR) was used to measure burn severity with pre and post fire data of four Landsat images acquired in October 2011, February and August 2012 and April 2013. The initial and extended differenced normalized burn ratio (DiNBR and DeNBR) were calculated. The calculated burned area of 24291 ha was 552ha lower than the map data determined with field reports. The 19.5% of that area was burned with high severity, 45% with moderate severity and 28.3% with low severity. Comparing fire severity and regrowth with land use, it is shown in DiNBR that the most severely burned areas were predominantly sclerophyllous vegetation (37.6%) and broad-leaved forests (31.1%). From the DeNRB it was found that the reestablishment of vegetation was slower in mixed forests and higher in sclerophyllous vegetation and in land with significant areas of natural vegetation. Faster recovery was calculated for the land uses of sclerophyllous vegetation (46.7%) and significant regrowth in areas of natural vegetation and lands occupied by agriculture (25.4%). Next steps of the study are field validation and crossing with erosion risk maps before to take land reclamation decisions.

Potential increase in fire hazard as a result of timber harvesting is a concern of forest managers throughout the United States. Treating fuels can help reduce unacceptable fire hazards. To evaluate alternative fuel treatments, managers need to know their effects on fire hazard. A decision analysis approach to estimating fire hazard in terms of expected burned area was applied to a watershed in the Siskiyou National Forest (Oregon). Three treatment alternatives (do nothing and two levels of yarding unmerchantable material) were evaluated, and the effects of the treatments were projected over a 90-yr period. Initially, the effects of applying a treatment are small. After 50 years of treatment, the most intense alternative can be expected to show almost a 50% reduction in burned area compared to no treatment. The procedure also estimates burned are by fire size and fire intensity classes. Managers may find this useful for estimating expected fire effects associated with a particular fuel treatment regime.

The proposed system integrates GPS / pseudolite / IMU and thermal camera in order to autonomously process the graphs by identification, extraction, tracking of forestfire or hot spots. The airborne detection platform, the graph-based algorithms and the signal processing frame are analyzed detailed; especially the rules of the decision function are expressed in terms of fuzzy logic, which is an appropriate method to express imprecise knowledge. The membership function and weights of the rules are fixed through a supervised learning process. The perception system in this paper is based on a network of sensorial stations and central stations. The sensorial stations collect data including infrared and visual images and meteorological information. The central stations exchange data to perform distributed analysis. The experiment results show that working procedure of detection system is reasonable and can accurately output the detection alarm and the computation of infrared oscillations.

The proposed system integrates GPS / pseudolite / IMU and thermal camera in order to autonomously process the graphs by identification, extraction, tracking of forestfire or hot spots. The airborne detection platform, the graph-based algorithms and the signal processing frame are analyzed detailed; especially the rules of the decision function are expressed in terms of fuzzy logic, which is an appropriate method to express imprecise knowledge. The membership function and weights of the rules are fixed through a supervised learning process. The perception system in this paper is based on a network of sensorial stations and central stations. The sensorial stations collect data including infrared and visual images and meteorological information. The central stations exchange data to perform distributed analysis. The experiment results show that working procedure of detection system is reasonable and can accurately output the detection alarm and the computation of infrared oscillations.

Fire is a major natural disturbance factor in boreal forests, and the frequency of forestfires is predicted to increase due to climate change in boreal regions. Because boreal forests comprise 30% of the global forest area, increases in the annual area burned may have significant implications for global carbon and nitrogen (N) cycles. The productivity of boreal forests is limited by low N availability. Fires cause N loss from ecosystems through oxidation and volatilization of N stored in biomass and soil. N balance may be poorly buffered against forestfires especially in sub-arctic ecosystems where atmospheric N deposition is low. Although forestfires alter N dynamics, there are little quantitative data available on N pools and fluxes through post-fire succession in sub-arctic boreal forests. We studied changes in N pools and fluxes, and the overall N balance across a 155-year forestfire chronosequence in sub-arctic Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) forests in Värriö Strict Nature Reserve situated in Finnish Lapland (67°46' N, 29°35' E). Soil was the largest N pool in all forest age classes and comprised 69-82% of the total ecosystem N pool. The total ecosystem N pool varied from 622 kg ha-1 in the recently burned forest to 960 kg ha-1 in the 155-year-old forest. The forests were N sinks in all age classes the annual N accumulation rate being 2.28 kg ha-1 yr-1 which was distributed almost equally between soil and biomass. The observed changes in ecosystem N pools were consistent with the computed N balance 2.10 kg ha-1 yr-1 over the 155-year post-fire period (Balance= (atmospheric deposition + N fixation) - (leaching + N2O emissions)). The results indicated that N deposition is an important component of the N balance and the N outputs are small (13% of the inputs) in the studied ecosystems. N2O fluxes were negligible (≤ 0.01 kg ha-1 yr-1) compared to the other N fluxes. The biological N fixation increased with succession and constituted 9% of the total N

Remote sensing plays an important role in obtaining rapid and complete information on the occurrence and evolution in space and time of forestfires. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study of fire events through Earth Observation data for early warning, crisis monitoring and post-event damage assessment or a synthesis of the fire event, both in a wide spatial range (local to regional) and temporal scale (short to long term). The fire products are stored and distributed by means of a WebGIS and a Geoportal with additional auxiliary geospatial data. These products allow fire managers to perform analysis and decision making in a more comprehensive manner.

Climatic changes cause temperature rise and thus increase the risk of forestfires. In Greece the forests with the greatest risk to fire are usually those located near residential and tourist areas where there are major pressures on land use changes, while there are no currently guaranteed cadastral maps and defined title deeds because of the lack of National and Forest Cadastre. In these areas the deliberate causes of forestfires are at a percentage more than 50%. This study focuses on the forest opening up model concerning both the prevention and suppression of forestfires. The most urgent interventions that can be done after the fire destructions is also studied in relation to soil protection constructions, in order to minimize the erosion and the torrential conditions. Digital orthophotos were used in order to produce and analyze spatial data using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Initially, Digital Elevation Models were generated, based on photogrammetry and forest areas as well as the forest road network were mapped. Road density, road distance, skidding distance and the opening up percentage were accurately measured for a forest complex. Finally, conclusions and suggestions have been drawn about the environmental compatibility of forest protection and wood harvesting works. In particular the contribution of modern technologies such as digital photogrammetry, remote sensing and Geographical Information Systems is very important, allowing reliable, effective and fast process of spatial analysis contributing to a successful planning of opening up works and fire protection.

Climate impacts the growth of trees and also affects disturbance regimes such as wildfire frequency. The European Alps have warmed considerably over the past half-century, but incomplete records make it difficult to definitively link alpine wildfire to climate change. Complicating this is the influence of forest composition and fuel loading on fire ignition risk, which is not considered by purely meteorological risk indices. Biogeochemical forest growth models track several variables that may be used as proxies for fire ignition risk. This study assesses the usefulness of the ecophysiological model BIOME-BGC's ‘soil water’ and ‘labile litter carbon’ variables in predicting fire ignition. A brief application case examines historic fire occurrence trends over pre-defined regions of Austria from 1960 to 2008. Results show that summer fire ignition risk is largely a function of low soil moisture, while winter fire ignitions are linked to the mass of volatile litter and atmospheric dryness. PMID:26109905

Accurate fire boundary delineation provides essential information to forest managers in allocating suppression costs and planning regeneration efforts. The objective of this study was to test the capability of computer-aided analysis of ERTS-1 MSS data to accurately define the boundary of a recent forestfire and to discriminate spectral classes within the perimeter. Two frames of ERTS-1 MSS data were selected for analysis of the Moccasin Mesa Fire in Mesa Verde National Park. Data sets were collected one-half growing season and one full growing season after the fire. Results indicate that computer-aided analysis of ERTS-1 MSS data has the capability for accurately delineating fire boundaries and determining acreage of the burned area. Distinct spectral classes may also be defined within the fire perimeter.

Discusses opinion survey results for the purpose of improving the capabilities of forest managers to effectively communicate new fire management objectives and plans. Includes recommendations based on the analysis concerning the appropriate audiences and content to target in the design of fire information programs. (ML)

Biomass burning (forestfire, wild fire) is a major source of pollutants, generating an estimate of 104 Tg per year of aerosol particles worldwide. These particles have adverse human health effects and can affect the radiation budget and climate directly and indirectly. Eighty percent of biomass burning aerosols are generated in the tropics and about thirty percent of them originate in the tropical regions of Asia (Andreae, 1991). Several recent studies have reported on the organic compositions of biomass burning aerosols in the tropical regions of South America and Africa, however, there is little data about forestfire aerosols in the tropical regions of Asia. It is important to characterize biomass burning aerosols in the tropical regions of Asia because the aerosol properties vary between fires depending on type and moisture of wood, combustion phase, wind conditions, and several other variables (Reid et al., 2005). We have characterized PM2.5 fractions of biomass burning aerosols emitted from forestfire in Indonesia. During the dry season in 2012, PM2.5 aerosols from several forestfires occurring in Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia were collected on quartz and teflon filters with two mini-volume samplers. Background aerosols in forest were sampled during transition period of rainy season to dry season (baseline period). Samples were analyzed with several analytical instruments. The carbonaceous content (organic and elemental carbon, OC and EC) of the aerosols was analyzed by a thermal optical reflectance technique using IMPROVE protocol. The metal, inorganic ion and organic components of the aerosols were analyzed by X-ray Fluorescence (XRF), ion chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, respectively. There was a great difference of chemical composition between forestfire and non-forestfire samples. Smoke aerosols for forestfires events were composed of ~ 45 % OC and ~ 2.5 % EC. On the other hand, background aerosols for baseline periods were

The spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) is a late-successional forest dependent species that is sensitive to forest management practices throughout its range. An increase in the frequency and spatial extent of standreplacing fires in western North America has prompted concern for the persistence of spotted owls and other sensitive late-successional forest associated species. However, there is sparse information on the effects of fire on spotted owls to guide conservation policies. In 2004-2005, we surveyed for California spotted owls during the breeding season at 32 random sites (16 burned, 16 unburned) throughout late-successional montane forest in Yosemite National Park, California. Our burned areas burned at all severities, but predominately involved low to moderate fire severity. Based on an information theoretic approach, spotted owl detection and occupancy rates were similar between burned and unburned sites. Nest and roost site occupancy was best explained by a model that combined total tree basal area (positive effect) with cover by coarse woody debris (negative effect). The density estimates of California spotted owl pairs were similar in burned and unburned forests, and the overall mean density estimate for Yosemite was higher than previously reported for montane forests. Our results indicate that low to moderate severity fires, historically common within montane forests of the Sierra Nevada, California, maintain habitat characteristics essential for spotted owl site occupancy. These results suggest that managed fires that emulate the historic fire regime of these forests may maintain spotted owl habitat and protect this species from the effects of future catastrophic fires.

Fire protection of critical space assets, including launch and fueling facilities and manned flight hardware, demands automatic sensors for continuous monitoring, and in certain high-threat areas, fast-reacting automatic suppression systems. Perhaps the most essential characteristic for these firedetection and suppression systems is high reliability; in other words, fire detectors should alarm only on actual fires and not be falsely activated by extraneous sources. Existing types of fire detectors have been greatly improved in the past decade; however, fundamental limitations of their method of operation leaves open a significant possibility of false alarms and restricts their usefulness. At the Civil Engineering Laboratory at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, a new type of fire detector is under development which 'sees' a fire visually, like a human being, and makes a reliable decision based on known visual characteristics of flames. Hardware prototypes of the Machine Vision (MV) FireDetection System have undergone live fire tests and demonstrated extremely high accuracy in discriminating actual fires from false alarm sources. In fact, this technology promises to virtually eliminate false activations. This detector could be used to monitor fueling facilities, launch towers, clean rooms, and other high-value and high-risk areas. Applications can extend to space station and in-flight shuttle operations as well; fiber optics and remote camera heads enable the system to see around obstructed areas and crew compartments. The capability of the technology to distinguish fires means that firedetection can be provided even during maintenance operations, such as welding.

Fire protection of critical space assets, including launch and fueling facilities and manned flight hardware, demands automatic sensors for continuous monitoring, and in certain high-threat areas, fast-reacting automatic suppression systems. Perhaps the most essential characteristic for these firedetection and suppression systems is high reliability; in other words, fire detectors should alarm only on actual fires and not be falsely activated by extraneous sources. Existing types of fire detectors have been greatly improved in the past decade; however, fundamental limitations of their method of operation leaves open a significant possibility of false alarms and restricts their usefulness. At the Civil Engineering Laboratory at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, a new type of fire detector is under development which 'sees' a fire visually, like a human being, and makes a reliable decision based on known visual characteristics of flames. Hardware prototypes of the Machine Vision (MV) FireDetection System have undergone live fire tests and demonstrated extremely high accuracy in discriminating actual fires from false alarm sources. In fact, this technology promises to virtually eliminate false activations. This detector could be used to monitor fueling facilities, launch towers, clean rooms, and other high-value and high-risk areas. Applications can extend to space station and in-flight shuttle operations as well; fiber optics and remote camera heads enable the system to see around obstructed areas and crew compartments. The capability of the technology to distinguish fires means that firedetection can be provided even during maintenance operations, such as welding.

Large, high-intensity fires have direct and long-lasting effects on forest ecosystems and present a serious threat to human life and property. However, even within the most catastrophic fires there is important variability in local-scale intensity that has important ramifications for forest mortality and regeneration. Quantifying this variability is difficult due to the rarity of catastrophic fire events, the extreme conditions at the time of the fires, and their large spatial extent. Instead fire severity is typically measured or estimated from observed patterns of vegetation mortality; however, differences in species- and size-specific responses to fires often makes fire severity a poor proxy for fire intensity. We developed a statistical method using simple, plot-based measurements of individual tree mortality to simultaneously estimate plot-level fire intensity and species-specific mortality patterns as a function of tree size. We applied our approach to an area of forest burned in the catastrophic Black Saturday fires that occurred near Melbourne, Australia, in February 2009. Despite being the most devastating fire in the past 70 years and our plots being located in the area that experienced some of the most intense fires in the 350,000 ha fire complex, we found that the estimated fire intensity was highly variable at multiple spatial scales. All eight tree species in our study differed in their susceptibility to fire-induced mortality, particularly among the largest size classes. We also found that seedling height and species richness of the post-fire seedling communities were both positively correlated with fire intensity. Spatial variability in disturbance intensity has important, but poorly understood, consequences for the short- and long-term dynamics of forests in the wake of catastrophic wildfires. Our study provides a tool to estimate fire intensity after a fire has passed, allowing new opportunities for linking spatial variability in fire intensity to

Although fire is the single greatest threat to the ecological integrity of Amazon forests, our ability to predict the occurrence of Amazon forestfires is rudimentary. Part of the difficulty encountered in making such predictions is the remarkable capacity of Amazon forests to tolerate drought by tapping moisture stored in deep soil. These forests can avoid drought-induced leaf shedding by withdrawing moisture to depths of 8 meters and more. Hence, the absorption of deep soil moisture allows these forests to maintain their leaf canopies following droughts of several months duration, thereby maintaining the deep shade and high relative humidity of the forest interior that prevents these ecosystems from burning. But the drought- and fire-avoidance that is conferred by this deep-rooting phenomenon is not unlimited. During successive years of drought, such as those provoked by El Nino episodes, deep soil moisture can be depleted, and drought-induced leaf shedding begins. The goal of this project was to incorporate this knowledge of Amazon forestfire ecology into a predictive model of forest flammability.

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin and polychlorinated dibenzofuran (PCDD/F) emissions from combustion of forest biomass were sampled to obtain an estimated emission factor for forestfires. An equal composition of live shoot and litter biomass from Oregon and North Carolina was b...

It is becoming clear that fires in boreal forests are not uniformly stand-replacing. On the contrary, marked variation in fire severity, measured as tree mortality, has been found both within and among individual fires. It is important to understand the conditions under which this variation can arise. We integrated forest sample plot data, tree allometries and historical forestfire records within a diameter class-structured model of 1.0 ha patches of mono-specific black spruce and jack pine stands in northern Québec, Canada. The model accounts for crown fire initiation and vertical spread into the canopy. It uses empirical relations between fire intensity, scorch height, the percent of crown scorched and tree mortality to simulate fire severity, specifically the percent reduction in patch basal area due to fire-caused mortality. A random forest and a regression tree analysis of a large random sample of simulated fires were used to test for an effect of fireline intensity, stand structure, species composition and pyrogeographic regions on resultant severity. Severity increased with intensity and was lower for jack pine stands. The proportion of simulated fires that burned at high severity (e.g. >75% reduction in patch basal area) was 0.80 for black spruce and 0.11 for jack pine. We identified thresholds in intensity below which there was a marked sensitivity of simulated fire severity to stand structure, and to interactions between intensity and structure. We found no evidence for a residual effect of pyrogeographic region on simulated severity, after the effects of stand structure and species composition were accounted for. The model presented here was able to produce variation in fire severity under a range of fire intensity conditions. This suggests that variation in stand structure is one of the factors causing the observed variation in boreal fire severity. PMID:26919456

Numerical simulation of water massif motion through the high temperature gases corresponding to the typical conditions of forestfires was carried out. Maximal values of part by volume of liquid evaporating from water massif under its motion through the flaming burning area were determined when solving the heat and mass transfer problem under the conditions of endothermic phase transformations. Influence of liquid phase transition heat on the heat and mass transfer conditions on the track of water massif was determined. The expediency of polydisperse interspaced in time and space atomization of water massifs under the large-scale (especially, forestfires) fire extinguishing was proved.

Wildfires in forests and forested areas in South Europe, North America, Central Asia and Australia are a diachronic threat with crucial ecological, economic and social impacts. Last decade the frequency, the magnitude and the intensity of fires have increased even more because of the climate change. An efficient response to such disasters requires an effective planning, with an early detection system of the ignition area and an accurate prediction of fire propagation to support the rapid response mechanisms. For this reason, information systems able to predict and visualize the behavior of fires, are valuable tools for fire fighting. Such systems, able also to perform simulations that evaluate the fire development scenarios, based on weather conditions, become valuable Decision Support Tools for fire mitigation planning. A Web-based Information System (WIS) developed in the framework of the FLIRE (Floods and fire risk assessment and management) project, a LIFE+ co-funded by the European Commission research, is presented in this study. The FLIRE WIS use forest fuel maps which have been developed by using generalized fuel maps, satellite data and in-situ observations. Furthermore, it leverages data from meteorological stations and weather forecast from numerical models to feed the fire propagation model with the necessary for the simulations inputs and to visualize the model's results for user defined time periods and steps. The user has real-time access to FLIRE WIS via any web browser from any platform (PC, Laptop, Tablet, Smartphone).

The 'Firefly' project is developing an infrared remote sensing system to provide near real-time wildland fire information for fire management and suppression. Recent technological advances in several areas now allow the design of an end-to-end, infrared system to map and detect wildland fires. The system components will include an airborne infrared sensor, automatic onboard signal and data processing, telecommunications link, and integration into a ground data terminal. The system will provide improved performance over current systems in terms of increased timeliness of data delivery, quantifiable accuracy, data consistency, reliability, and maintainability. The system will be the next generation of wildland fire mapping and detection system for the United States Forest Service.

The 'Firefly' project is developing an infrared remote sensing system to provide near real-time wildland fire information for fire management and suppression. Recent technological advances in several areas now allow the design of an end-to-end, infrared system to map and detect wildland fires. The system components will include an airborne infrared sensor, automatic onboard signal and data processing, telecommunications link, and integration into a ground data terminal. The system will provide improved performance over current systems in terms of increased timeliness of data delivery, quantifiable accuracy, data consistency, reliability, and maintainability. The system will be the next generation of wildland fire mapping and detection system for the United States Forest Service.

The forestfires do much damage to our life in ecological and economic aspects. South Korea is probably more liable to suffer from the forestfire because mountain area occupies more than half of land in South Korea. They have recently launched the COMS(Communication Ocean and Meteorological Satellite) which is a geostationary satellite. In this paper, we developed forestfiredetection algorithm using COMS data. Generally, forestfiredetection algorithm uses characteristics of 4 and 11 micrometer brightness temperature. Our algorithm additionally uses LST(Land Surface Temperature). We confirmed the result of our firedetection algorithm using statistical data of Korea Forest Service and ASTER(Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) images. We used the data in South Korea On April 1 and 2, 2011 because there are small and big forestfires at that time. The detection rate was 80% in terms of the frequency of the forestfires and was 99% in terms of the damaged area. Considering the number of COMS's channels and its low resolution, this result is a remarkable outcome. To provide users with the result of our algorithm, we developed a smartphone application for users JSP(Java Server Page). This application can work regardless of the smartphone's operating system. This study can be unsuitable for other areas and days because we used just two days data. To improve the accuracy of our algorithm, we need analysis using long-term data as future work.

On-going climatic changes substantially accelerate current fire regimes in Northern Eurasian ecosystems, particularly in forests. During 1998-2012, wildfires enveloped on average ~10.5 M ha year-1 in Russia with a large annual variation (between 3 and 30 M ha) and average direct carbon emissions at ~150 Tg C year-1. Catastrophic fires, which envelope large areas, spread in usually incombustible wetlands, escape from control and provide extraordinary negative impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, economics, infrastructure, environment, and health of population, become a typical feature of the current fire regimes. There are new evidences of correlation between catastrophic fires and large-scale climatic anomalies at a continental scale. While current climatic predictions suggest the dramatic warming (at the average at 6-7 °C for the country and up to 10-12°C in some northern continental regions), any substantial increase of summer precipitation does not expected. Increase of dryness and instability of climate will impact fire risk and severity of consequences. Current models suggest a 2-3 fold increase of the number of fires by the end of this century in the boreal zone. They predict increases of the number of catastrophic fires; a significant increase in the intensity of fire and amount of consumed fuel; synergies between different types of disturbances (outbreaks of insects, unregulated anthropogenic impacts); acceleration of composition of the gas emissions due to enhanced soil burning. If boreal forests would become a typing element, the mass mortality of trees would increase fire risk and severity. Permafrost melting and subsequent change of hydrological regimes very likely will lead to the degradation and destruction of boreal forests, as well as to the widespread irreversible replacement of forests by other underproductive vegetation types. A significant feedback between warming and escalating fire regimes is very probable in Russia and particularly in the

Vegetation fires have become an increasing problem in tropical environments as a consequence of socioeconomic pressures and subsequent land-use change. In response, fire management systems are being developed. This study set out to determine the relationships between two aspects of the fire problems in western Indonesia and Malaysia, and two components of the Canadian ForestFire Weather Index System. The study resulted in a new method for calibrating components of fire danger rating systems based on satellite firedetection (hotspot) data. Once the climate was accounted for, a problematic number of fires were related to high levels of the Fine Fuel Moisture Code. The relationship between climate, Fine Fuel Moisture Code, and hotspot occurrence was used to calibrate Fire Occurrence Potential classes where low accounted for 3% of the fires from 1994 to 2000, moderate accounted for 25%, high 26%, and extreme 38%. Further problems arise when there are large clusters of fires burning that may consume valuable land or produce local smoke pollution. Once the climate was taken into account, the hotspot load (number and size of clusters of hotspots) was related to the Fire Weather Index. The relationship between climate, Fire Weather Index, and hotspot load was used to calibrate Fire Load Potential classes. Low Fire Load Potential conditions (75% of an average year) corresponded with 24% of the hotspot clusters, which had an average size of 30% of the largest cluster. In contrast, extreme Fire Load Potential conditions (1% of an average year) corresponded with 30% of the hotspot clusters, which had an average size of 58% of the maximum. Both Fire Occurrence Potential and Fire Load Potential calibrations were successfully validated with data from 2001. This study showed that when ground measurements are not available, fire statistics derived from satellite firedetection archives can be reliably used for calibration. More importantly, as a result of this work, Malaysia and

There are many vegetation in Iran. This is because of extent of Iran and its width. One of these vegetation is forest vegetation most prevalent in Northern provinces named Guilan, Mazandaran, Gulestan, Ardebil as well as East Azerbaijan. These forests are always threatened by natural forestfires so much so that there have been reports of tens of fires in recent years. Forestfires are one of the major environmental as well as economic, social and security concerns in the world causing much damages. According to climatology, forestfires are one of the important factors in the formation and dispersion of vegetation. Also, regarding the environment, forestfires cause the emission of considerable amounts of greenhouse gases, smoke and dust into the atmosphere which in turn causes the earth temperature to rise up and are unhealthy to humans, animals and vegetation. In agriculture droughts are the usual side effects of these fires. The causes of forestfires could be categorized as either Human or Natural Causes. Naturally, it is impossible to completely contain forestfires; however, areas with high potentials of fire could be designated and analysed to decrease the risk of fires. The zoning of forestfire potential is a multi-criteria problem always accompanied by inherent uncertainty like other multi-criteria problems. So far, various methods and algorithm for zoning hazardous areas via Remote Sensing (RS) and Geospatial Information System (GIS) have been offered. This paper aims at zoning forestfire potential of Gulestan Province of Iran forests utilizing Remote Sensing, Geospatial Information System, meteorological data, MODIS images and granular computing method. Granular computing is part of granular mathematical and one way of solving multi-criteria problems such forestfire potential zoning supervised by one expert or some experts , and it offers rules for classification with the least inconsistencies. On the basis of the experts' opinion, 6 determinative

Reliable estimates of biomass combusted during wildfires can be obtained from satellite observations of fire radiative power (FRP). Total fire radiative energy (FRE) is typically estimated by integrating instantaneous measurements of fire radiative power (FRP) at the time of orbital satellite overpass or geostationary observation. Remotely-sensed FRP products from orbital satellites are usually global in extent, requiring several thresholding and filtering operations to reduce the number of false firedetections. Some filters required for a global product may not be appropriate to firedetection in the boreal forest resulting in errors of omission and increased data processing times. We evaluate the effect of a boreal-specific active firedetection algorithm and estimates of FRP/FRE. Boreal fires are more likely to escape detection due to lower intensity smouldering combustion and sub canopy fires, therefore improvements in boreal firedetection could substantially reduce the uncertainty of emissions from biomass combustion in the region. High temporal resolution data from geostationary satellites have led to improvements in FRE estimation in tropical and temperate forests, but such a perspective is not possible for high latitude ecosystems given the equatorial orbit of geostationary observation. The increased density of overpasses in high latitudes from polar-orbiting satellites, however, may provide adequate temporal sampling for estimating FRE.

New burned area datasets and top-down constraints from atmospheric concentration measurements of pyrogenic gases have decreased the large uncertainty in fire emissions estimates. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural waste, and peat fires to total global fire emissions. Here we used a revised version of the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford-Approach (CASA) biogeochemical model and improved satellite-derived estimates of area burned, fire activity, and plant productivity to calculate fire emissions for the 1997-2009 period on a 0.5° spatial resolution with a monthly time step. For November 2000 onwards, estimates were based on burned area, active firedetections, and plant productivity from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. For the partitioning we focused on the MODIS era. We used burned area estimates based on Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) active fire data prior to MODIS (1997-2000) and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) derived estimates of plant productivity during the same period. Average global fire carbon emissions were 2.0 Pg yr-1 with significant interannual variability during 1997-2001 (2.8 Pg/yr in 1998 and 1.6 Pg/yr in 2001). Emissions during 2002-2007 were relatively constant (around 2.1 Pg/yr) before declining in 2008 (1.7 Pg/yr) and 2009 (1.5 Pg/yr) partly due to lower deforestation fire emissions in South America and tropical Asia. During 2002-2007, emissions were highly variable from year-to-year in many regions, including in boreal Asia, South America, and Indonesia, but these regional differences cancelled out at a global level. During the MODIS era (2001-2009), most fire carbon emissions were from fires in grasslands and savannas (44%) with smaller contributions from tropical deforestation and degradation fires (20%), woodland fires

New burned area datasets and top-down constraints from atmospheric concentration measurements of pyrogenic gases have decreased the large uncertainty in fire emissions estimates. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural waste, and peat fires to total global fire emissions. Here we used a revised version of the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford-Approach (CASA) biogeochemical model and improved satellite-derived estimates of area burned, fire activity, and plant productivity to calculate fire emissions for the 1997-2009 period on a 0.5° spatial resolution with a monthly time step. For November 2000 onwards, estimates were based on burned area, active firedetections, and plant productivity from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. For the partitioning we focused on the MODIS era. We used maps of burned area derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) active fire data prior to MODIS (1997-2000) and estimates of plant productivity derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) observations during the same period. Average global fire carbon emissions according to this version 3 of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED3) were 2.0 Pg C year-1 with significant interannual variability during 1997-2001 (2.8 Pg C year-1 in 1998 and 1.6 Pg C year-1 in 2001). Globally, emissions during 2002-2007 were relatively constant (around 2.1 Pg C year-1) before declining in 2008 (1.7 Pg C year-1) and 2009 (1.5 Pg C year-1) partly due to lower deforestation fire emissions in South America and tropical Asia. On a regional basis, emissions were highly variable during 2002-2007 (e.g., boreal Asia, South America, and Indonesia), but these regional differences canceled out at a global level. During the MODIS era (2001-2009), most carbon emissions were from fires in grasslands and

New burned area datasets and top-down constraints from atmospheric concentration measurements of pyrogenic gases have decreased the large uncertainty in fire emissions estimates. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural waste, and peat fires to total global fire emissions. Here we used a revised version of the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford-Approach (CASA) biogeochemical model and improved satellite-derived estimates of area burned, fire activity, and plant productivity to calculate fire emissions for the 1997-2009 period on a 0.5° spatial resolution with a monthly time step. For November 2000 onwards, estimates were based on burned area, active firedetections, and plant productivity from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. For the partitioning we focused on the MODIS era. We used burned area estimates based on Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) active fire data prior to MODIS (1997-2000) and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) derived estimates of plant productivity during the same period. Average global fire carbon emissions were 2.0 Pg yr-1 with significant interannual variability during 1997-2001 (2.8 Pg yr-1 in 1998 and 1.6 Pg yr-1 in 2001). Emissions during 2002-2007 were relatively constant (around 2.1 Pg yr-1) before declining in 2008 (1.7 Pg yr-1) and 2009 (1.5 Pg yr-1) partly due to lower deforestation fire emissions in South America and tropical Asia. During 2002-2007, emissions were highly variable from year-to-year in many regions, including in boreal Asia, South America, and Indonesia, but these regional differences cancelled out at a global level. During the MODIS era (2001-2009), most fire carbon emissions were from fires in grasslands and savannas (44%) with smaller contributions from tropical deforestation and degradation fires (20%), woodland

Lack of reliable fire warning and detection systems for urban/wildland interface, large area industrial facilities and transportation systems result each year in a loss of millions of dollars worth of property; it also endangers lives. Typical optical firedetection sensor do not work well under frequency encountered adverse atmospheric conditions and, in addition, are incapable of covering sizable areas. WaveBand has recently developed hardware to study the feasibility of firedetection using a millimeter wave (MMW) scanning radiometer. It has proven the advantages of remote firedetection even under adverse weather conditions and through fire-generated smoke, better immunity to false alarms than optical sensors, and larger area of coverage. Despite using a wavelength that is much longer than that of visible light, the MMW sensor can accurate pinpoint the location of a developing fire.

Specifically prepared for the use of Forest Service field-based interpreters of the management, protection, and use of forest and range resources and the associated human, cultural, and natural history found on these lands, this book is the second in a series of six primers on the multiple use of forest and range resources. Following an…

Boreal forests are one of the largest biomes on earth, covering 27% of the world’s forests. In Canada, the dynamics of the boreal forests are largely dominated by large scale disturbances, with crown fires being the most geographically and temporally common. The probability of fire occurrence is strongly coupled to climate, making fire regimes quite variable across the country. Recent trends in fire regimes as well as predicted trends under climate scenarios also vary spatially. We present the results of two studies in which we have evaluated the climate - fire - forest feedbacks in parts of the boreal forest. Results show that feedbacks can be substantial and can alter the importance and even the direction of forest impacts on the climate system. The first feedback investigated was the link between fire-driven changes in forest cover properties and albedo in the boreal forests of Eastern Canada. Repeated disturbances in closed canopy forest dominated by black spruce (Picea mariana) on coarse soils sometimes push stands into an alternate stable open lichen woodland state. These lichen woodlands have a high albedo on account of the pale ground cover. Calculations show that the increase in albedo due to the opening of the canopy has a greater radiative forcing effect than that of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere on account of the burning of the original forest. In these regions, climate-driven fire regimes thus generate a negative feedback to the climate system through their effects on forest cover properties. The second feedback investigated is linked to a recent decrease in fire frequency in Eastern Canada, and how this decrease might be affecting the growth-enhancing effect of a warmer climate because of its impact on the age-class distribution of the forest. The fire regime drives the age class distribution of forest landscapes. Since age class distribution drives landscape-level productivity, we have studied how this effect interacts with climate warming in

Recently a number of traditional models related to the percolation theory has been considered by means of a new computational methodology that does not use Cantor's ideas and describes infinite and infinitesimal numbers in accordance with the principle 'The whole is greater than the part' (Euclid's Common Notion 5). Here we apply the new arithmetic to a cellular automaton forest-fire model which is connected with the percolation methodology and in some sense combines the dynamic and the static percolation problems and under certain conditions exhibits critical fluctuations. It is well known that there exist two versions of the model: real forest-fire model where fire catches adjacent trees in the forest in the step by step manner and simplified version with instantaneous combustion. Using new approach we observe that in both situations we deal with the same model but with different time resolution. We show that depending on the "microscope" we use the same cellular automaton forest-fire model reveals either instantaneous forest combustion or step by step firing. By means of the new approach it was also observed that as far as we choose an infinitesimal tree growing rate and infinitesimal ratio between the ignition probability and the growth probability we determine the measure or extent of the system size infinity that provides the criticality of the system dynamics. Correspondent inequalities for grosspowers are derived.

The success of fire management policies can be gauged by changes on the fire regime characteristics. Climate, vegetation (fuel) and topography determine the fire regime, and exert their influences at distinct temporal and spatial scales whose relative importance is quite debated. Climate factors are expected to prevail at the regional scale, while the local control of fire behaviour is determined by fuel and terrain. Recent modifications - 2001-2005 versus 2006-2008 - in wildfire incidence in Portugal are quantified by eliminating the noise associated to fire weather conditions. The following indicators of fire management performance are used, each reflecting a distinct fire management activity: number of fires, proportion of fires larger than 1 ha, proportion of fires larger than 100 ha, and median size of wildfires larger than 100 ha. The performance indicators calculated on a daily basis were examined as a function of the Canadian ForestFire Weather Index (FWI) System components. Analysis of covariance was used to identify differences in performance between the two study periods, and non-linear regression analysis was employed to model performance indicators from FWI components for 2001-2005. The resulting models were then applied to 2006-2008 and the deviation between observed and predicted values was determined. Least square means (adjusted for neutral weather conditions) revealed statistically significant differences between the two periods for all indicators but the median size of wildfires > 100 ha. The remaining indicators were in 2006-2008 reduced by 21% (no. fires), 37% (proportion of fires >1 ha) and 63% (proportion of fires >100 ha) in comparison with 2001-2005. The results indicate that the combined performance of fire prevention, firedetection, first intervention and initial attack have improved after 2005. Reduction in the number of large fires is especially relevant, given their impact and weight in total burned area. However, no evidences were

Hydrogen firedetection system discovers fires by detecting the flickering ultraviolet radiation emitted by the OH molecule, a short-lived intermediate combustion product found in hydrogen-air flames. In a space application, the system discriminates against false signals from sunlight and rocket engine exhaust plume radiation.

Many physical, chemical, mineralogical, and biological soil properties can be affected by forestfires. The effects are chiefly a result of burn severity, which consists of peak temperatures and duration of the fire. Climate, vegetation, and topography of the burnt area control the resilience of the soil system; some fire-induced changes can even be permanent. Low to moderate severity fires, such as most of those prescribed in forest management, promote renovation of the dominant vegetation through elimination of undesired species and transient increase of pH and available nutrients. No irreversible ecosystem change occurs, but the enhancement of hydrophobicity can render the soil less able to soak up water and more prone to erosion. Severe fires, such as wildfires, generally have several negative effects on soil. They cause significant removal of organic matter, deterioration of both structure and porosity, considerable loss of nutrients through volatilisation, ash entrapment in smoke columns, leaching and erosion, and marked alteration of both quantity and specific composition of microbial and soil-dwelling invertebrate communities. However, despite common perceptions, if plants succeed in promptly recolonising the burnt area, the pre-fire level of most properties can be recovered and even enhanced. This work is a review of the up-to-date literature dealing with changes imposed by fires on properties of forest soils. Ecological implications of these changes are described. PMID:15688212

The extended drought in western Amazonia during 2005 provided the conditions for wild fires that spread in old- growth rain forests and cleared areas of the contiguous areas of Madre de Dios, Peru, Acre, Brazil, and Pando, Bolivia, collectively known as the MAP Region. The greatest extent of the wild fires occurred in eastern Acre State with 60,000 km2 of diverse land uses that range from intensely occupied colonization areas, large cattle ranches, extractive and biological reserves and indigenous areas. At the request of the Public Ministry of Acre and other government agencies we analyzed Landsat 5 and CBERS 2 imagery for forests with canopies affected by fires, using visual interpretation and manual digitalization of polygons. Accuracy assessment was done with 180 aerial photos. The total area of forest with canopies affected by fires was 267,000 ha, roughly five times recent annual deforestation rates for Acre State. Omission and commission errors were 28% and 2%, respectively. Burn scars in non-forest areas were determined using ASTER and CBERS 2 imagery via supervised classification. Total open area with burn scars was 203,000 ha. The total of open area and forests affected by fires exceeded 470,000 ha due to three factors: (1) some images used did not include the last weeks of burning; (2) ground fires in forests that did not affect the canopy and therefore were not detected; and (3) concern of the interpreters to avoid commission errors. Of the twelve municipalities of eastern Acre, most affected were Acrelandia, Placido de Castro, Epitaciolandia with >31%, >19% and >17% of the municipality affected, respectively). The largest impact, >114,000 ha, occurred in the Rio Branco Municipality. Similar patterns of burning occurred in Pando and in Madre de Dios. The environmental, social and economic disaster that these fires produced may be a harbinger of future impacts in southwestern Amazonia if current climate predictions prove to be correct.

In semi arid land in Algeria the ecosystem of steppe presents a different vegetal formation, generally used for pasture, and the forest are in most time composed by species like Aleppo pine sparse. And seen climatic unfavourable conditions in zone and impact of forestfires; we notes deterioration of physical environment particularly, deterioration of natural forest. This deterioration of forests provokes an unbalance of environment witch provokes a process of deterioration advanced in the ultimate stadium is desertification. The specific regeneration of plants are influenced greatly by the regime of fire (season of fire, intensity, interval), who leads to the recuperation of the vegetation of meadow- fire, but in the most case there are unfavourable climatic conditions. In this survey we used satellite data for detection of zones with risk of forestfire and their influenced parameters witch permit generally a desertification process. A thematic detailed analysis of forests ecosystems well attended, some processing on the satellite data (2003) allowed us to identify and classifying the forests in there opinion components flowers. We identified ampleness of fire on this zone also. The parameters slope, the proximity to the road and the forests formations and fire regime were studied in the goal of determining the zones to risk of fire drill. A crossing of information in a geographic information system according to a very determined logic allowed us to classify the zones in degree of risk of fire. These results compared with image data (2011) permit to conclude that in semi arid land the forest ecosystem after fire becomes steppe courses permitting installation of process of desertification.

In forests, the effects of different life forms on fire behavior may vary depending on their contributions to total fuel loads. We examined the distribution of fuel components before fire, their effects on fire behavior, and the effects of fire on subsequent fuel recovery in pine forests within the National Key Deer Refuge in the Florida Keys. We conducted a burning experiment in six blocks, within each of which we assigned 1-ha plots to three treatments: control, summer, and winter burn. Owing to logistical constraints, we burned only 11 plots, three in winter and eight in summer, over a 4-year period from 1998 to 2001. We used path analysis to model the effects of fuel type and char height, an indicator of fire intensity, on fuel consumption. Fire intensity increased with surface fuel loads, but was negatively related to the quantity of hardwood shrub fuels, probably because these fuels are associated with a moist microenvironment within hardwood patches, and therefore tend to resist fire. Winter fires were milder than summer fires, and were less effective at inhibiting shrub encroachment. A mixed seasonal approach is suggested for fire management, with burns applied opportunistically under a range of winter and summer conditions, but more frequently than that prevalent in the recent past. ?? IAWF 2006.

The Ames autotracking airborne sun photometer was used to investigate the spectral depth between 380 and 1020 nm of smokes from a jet fuel pool fire and a forestfire in May and August 1988, respectively. Results show that the forestfire smoke exhibited a stronger wavelength dependence of optical depths than did the jet fuel fire smoke at optical depths less than unity. At optical depths greater than or equal to 1, both smokes showed neutral wavelength dependence, similar to that of an optically thin stratus deck. These results verify findings of earlier investigations and have implications both on the climatic impact of large-scale smokes and on the wavelength-dependent transmission of electromagnetic signals.

Fires of large dimension destroy forests, harvests and housing objects. Apart from that combustion products and burned surfaces become large ecological problems. Very often fires emerge simultaneously on different locations of a region so a question could be asked if they always have been a consequence of negligence, pyromania, high temperatures or maybe there has been some other cause. This paper is an attempt of establishing the possible connection between forestfires that numerous satellites registered and activities happening on the Sun immediately before fires ignite. Fires emerged on relatively large areas from Portugal and Spain on August 2005, as well as on other regions of Europe. The cases that have been analyzed show that, in every concrete situation, an emission of strong electromagnetic and thermal corpuscular energy from highly energetic regions that were in geo-effective position had preceded the fires. Such emissions have, usually, very high energy and high speeds of particles and come from coronary holes that also have been either in the very structure or in the immediate closeness of the geo-effective position. It should also be noted that the solar wind directed towards the Earth becomes weaker with deeper penetration towards the topographic surface. However, the results presented in this paper suggest that, there is a strong causality relationship between solar activity and the ignition of these forestfires taking place in South-western Europe. PMID:18291443

A Large Fire Database (LFDB), which includes information on fire location, start date, final size, cause, and suppression action, has been developed for all fires larger than 200 ha in area for Canada for the 1959-1997 period. The LFDB represents only 3.1% of the total number of Canadian fires during this period, the remaining 96.9% of fires being suppressed while <200 ha in size, yet accounts for ˜97% of the total area burned, allowing a spatial and temporal analysis of recent Canadian landscape-scale fire impacts. On average ˜2 million ha burned annually in these large fires, although more than 7 million ha burned in some years. Ecozones in the boreal and taiga regions experienced the greatest areas burned, with an average of 0.7% of the forested land burning annually. Lightning fires predominate in northern Canada, accounting for 80% of the total LFDB area burned. Large fires, although small in number, contribute substantially to area burned, most particularly in the boreal and taiga regions. The Canadian fire season runs from late April through August, with most of the area burned occurring in June and July due primarily to lightning fire activity in northern Canada. Close to 50% of the area burned in Canada is the result of fires that are not actioned due to their remote location, low values-at-risk, and efforts to accommodate the natural role of fire in these ecosystems. The LFDB is updated annually and is being expanded back in time to permit a more thorough analysis of long-term trends in Canadian fire activity.

A Large Fire Database (LFDB), which includes information on fire location, start date, final size, cause, and suppression action, has been developed for all fires larger than 200 ha in area for Canada for the 1959-1997 period. The LFDB represents only 3.1% of the total number of Canadian fires during this period, the remaining 96.9% of fires being suppressed while <200 ha in size, yet accounts for ~97% of the total area burned, allowing a spatial and temporal analysis of recent Canadian landscape-scale fire impacts. On average ~2 million ha burned annually in these large fires, although more than 7 million ha burned in some years. Ecozones in the boreal and taiga regions experienced the greatest areas burned, with an average of 0.7% of the forested land burning annually. Lightning fires predominate in northern Canada, accounting for 80% of the total LFDB area burned. Large fires, although small in number, contribute substantially to area burned, most particularly in the boreal and taiga regions. The Canadian fire season runs from late April through August, with most of the area burned occurring in June and July due primarily to lightning fire activity in northern Canada. Close to 50% of the area burned in Canada is the result of fires that are not actioned due to their remote location, low values-at-risk, and efforts to accommodate the natural role of fire in these ecosystems. The LFDB is updated annually and is being expanded back in time to permit a more thorough analysis of long-term trends in Canadian fire activity.

The Russian boreal zone supports a huge terrestrial carbon pool. Moreover, it is a tremendous reservoir of wood products concentrated mainly in Siberia. The main natural disturbance in these forests is wildfire, which modifies the carbon budget and has potentially important climate feedbacks. In addition, both legal and illegal logging increase landscape complexity and fire hazard. We investigated a number of sites in different regions of Siberia to evaluate the impacts of fire and logging on fuel loads, carbon emissions, tree regeneration, soil respiration, and microbocenosis. We found large variations of fire and logging effects among regions depending on growing conditions and type of logging activity. Partial logging had no negative impact on forest conditions and carbon cycle. Illegal logging resulted in increase of fire hazard, and higher carbon emissions than legal logging. The highest fuel loads and carbon emissions were found on repeatedly burned unlogged sites where first fire resulted in total tree mortality. Repeated fires together with logging activities in drier conditions and on large burned sites resulted in insufficient regeneration, or even total lack of tree seedlings. Soil respiration was less on both burned and logged areas than in undisturbed forest. The highest structural and functional disturbances of the soil microbocenosis were observed on logged burned sites. Understanding current interactions between fire and logging is important for modeling ecosystem processes and for managers to develop strategies of sustainable forest management. Changing patterns in the harvest of wood products increase landscape complexity and can be expected to increase emissions and ecosystem damage from wildfires, inhibit recovery of natural ecosystems, and exacerbate impacts of wildland fire on changing climate and air quality. The research was supported by NASA LCLUC Program, RFBR grant # 12-04-31258, and Russian Academy of Sciences.

The widespread drought suffered by the Amazon rain forest in the summer of 2005 was heralded at the time as the drought of the century. Because of the dehydrated conditions, supplemented by slash and burn agricultural practices, the drought led to widespread forestfires throughout the western Amazon, a portion of the rain forest usually too lush to support spreading wildfires. Only 5 years later, the 2005 season was outdone by even more widespread drought, with fires decimating more than 3000 square kilometers of western Amazonian rain forest. Blame for the wildfires has been consistently laid on deforestation and agricultural practices, but a convincing climatological explanation exists as well. (Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2011GL047392, 2011)

Selective logging and forestfires have increased at a rapid pace in tropical regions in recent decades. Forest disturbances caused by selective logging and forestfires may vary in scale, ranging from local damage to forest canopy, habitats, soils, and biodiversity, to global changes caused by logging-related release of carbon into the atmosphere. This study provides a regional assessment of forest impacts by selective logging and forestfires for 1992, 1996, and 1999. Multivariate statistical models, remote sensing approaches, Geographic Information System (GIS), and remotely sensed imagery combined with field data were applied to verify the scale of environmental changes associated with these processes of forest disturbance. In this regard, the study widens the current knowledge on land use and land cover classifications to include selectively logged and burned forests as additional thematic classes. These classes have not yet been properly accounted for by conventional remote sensing approaches of deforestation assessment, despite their relevance for the understanding of the changes affecting tropical forests. This study is the first multi-temporal and spatial assessment of the selective logging and forestfire impacts in the Brazilian Amazon. The resulting estimates show that at least 11800 km 2, 16500 km2, and 35600 km2 of natural forests were selectively logged and/or burned by 1992, 1996, and 1999, respectively. More than 60% of these forest disturbances observed in the Brazilian Amazon during those years were due to selective logging activities. However, forestfires were responsible for the greatest impacts on natural forests, causing an estimated loss of 18.8% of forest canopy in the study region. I also estimated that approximately 5467 km2, 7618 km2, and 17437 km2 were active areas of selective logging and/or forestfires in 1992, 1996, and 1999, respectively. In addition, approximately 4% of total forest disturbed by selective logging and forestfires

Current aircraft cargo bay firedetection systems are generally based on smoke detection. Smoke detectors in modern aircraft are predominately photoelectric particle detectors that reliably detect smoke, but also detect dust, fog, and most other small particles. False alarms caused by these contaminants can be very costly to the airlines because they can cause flights to be diverted needlessly. To minimize these expenses, a new approach to cargo bay firedetection is needed. This paper describes a novel firedetection system developed by the Goodrich Advanced Sensors Technical Center. The system uses multiple sensors of different technologies to provide a way of discriminating between real fire events and false triggers. The system uses infrared imaging along with multiple, distributed chemical sensors and smoke detectors, all feeding data to a digital signal processor. The processor merges data from the chemical sensors, smoke detectors, and processed images to determine if a fire (or potential fire) is present. Decision algorithms look at all this data in real-time and make the final decision about whether a fire is present. In the paper, we present a short background of the problem we are solving, the reasons for choosing the technologies used, the design of the system, the signal processing methods and results from extensive system testing. We will also show that multiple sensing technologies are crucial to reducing false alarms in such systems.

... Forest Service Nationwide Aerial Application of Fire Retardant on National Forest System Lands AGENCY... aerial application of fire retardant on National Forest System lands. The responsible official for this.... Comments may also be sent via e- mail to FireRetardantEIS@fs.fed.us . FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:...

Fire history and fire-climate relationships of upper elevation forests of the southwestern United States are imperative for informing management decisions in the face of increased crown fire occurrence and climate change. I used dendroecological techniques to reconstruct fires and stand-replacing fire patch size in the Madrean Sky Islands and Mogollon Plateau. Reconstructed patch size (1685-1904) was compared with contemporary patch size (1996-2004). Reconstructed fires at three sites had stand-replacing patches totaling > 500 ha. No historical stand-replacing fire patches were evident in the mixed conifer/aspen forests of the Sky Islands. Maximum stand-replacing fire patch size of modern fires (1129 ha) was greater than that reconstructed from aspen (286 ha) and spruce-fir (521 ha). Undated spruce-fir patches may be evidence of larger (>2000ha) stand-replacing fire patches. To provide climatological context for fire history I used correlation and regionalization analyses to document spatial and temporal variability in climate regions, and El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) teleconnections using 273 tree-ring chronologies (1732-1979). Four regions were determined by common variability in annual ring width. The component score time series replicate spatial variability in 20th century droughts (e.g., 1950's) and pluvials (e.g., 1910's). Two regions were significantly correlated with instrumental SOI and AMO, and three with PDO. Sub-regions within the southwestern U.S. varied geographically between the instrumental (1900-1979) and the pre-instrumental periods (1732-1899). Mapped correlations between ENSO, PDO and AMO, and tree-ring indices illustrate detailed sub-regional variability in the teleconnections. I analyzed climate teleconnections, and fire-climate relationships of historical upper elevation fires from 16 sites in 8 mountain ranges. I tested for links between Palmer

This paper analyses forestfires in the perspective of dynamical systems. Forestfires exhibit complex correlations in size, space and time, revealing features often present in complex systems, such as the absence of a characteristic length-scale, or the emergence of long range correlations and persistent memory. This study addresses a public domain forestfires catalogue, containing information of events for Portugal, during the period from 1980 up to 2012. The data is analysed in an annual basis, modelling the occurrences as sequences of Dirac impulses with amplitude proportional to the burnt area. First, we consider mutual information to correlate annual patterns. We use visualization trees, generated by hierarchical clustering algorithms, in order to compare and to extract relationships among the data. Second, we adopt the Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) visualization tool. MDS generates maps where each object corresponds to a point. Objects that are perceived to be similar to each other are placed on the map forming clusters. The results are analysed in order to extract relationships among the data and to identify forestfire patterns. PMID:25137393

The author has identified the following significant results. Detection of short-lived events has continued. Forestfires, oil spills, vegetation damage, volcanoes, storm ridges, earthquakes, and floods have been detected and analyzed.

Forestfires are one of the dominant ecological force shaping the distribution and structure of boreal ecosystems. Many areas of the boreal forests of Alaska often contain deep layers of moss, duff, and peat, resulting in large pools of sequestered carbon and biomass that potentially can burn and smolder for long periods of time during these wildfires creating hazardous smoke episodes for local residents and communities and causing detrimental landscape impacts. Research to quantify forest floor consumption is critical for effective modeling fire effects such as smoke emissions, regional haze, global warming, permafrost melting, erosion, and plant succession. Forest floor reduction was measured at 18 black and white spruce and birch-aspen prescribed fires between 1990-2004 and 24 black and white spruce sites on 6 wildfires during 2003 and 2004. Three of the sites were part of the large international Frostfire project near Fairbanks, Alaska, and were used as an independent test data set. Several forest floor reduction equations were developed, of which one is presented in this presentation. The double parameter equation uses upper forest floor fuel moisture content and preburn forest floor depth as independent variables. The fuel moisture content of the upper forest floor can be obtained from forest floor samples that are collected, oven dried, and weighed to determine gravimetric fuel moisture content. The preburn forest floor depths require onsite measurements to be collected. The forest floor consumption model has been incorporated into Consume, a software package used by land managers and scientists to predict fuel consumption during wildland fires.

Repeated fires might have different effect on ecosystem carbon storage than a single fire event, but information on repeated fires and their effects on forest ecosystems and carbon storage is scarce. However, changes in climate, vegetation composition, and human activities are expected to make forests more susceptible to fires that recur with relatively high frequency. In this study, the effects of repeated fires on ecosystem carbon and nitrogen stocks were examined along a fire-induced forest/grassland gradient wherein the fire events varied from an unburned forest to repeatedly burned grassland. Results from the study show repeated fires drastically decreased ecosystem carbon and nitrogen stocks along the forest/grassland gradient. The reduction began with the disappearance of living tree biomass, and followed by the loss of soil carbon and nitrogen. Within 4 years of the onset of repeated fires on the unburned forest, the original ecosystem carbon and nitrogen stocks were reduced by 42% and 21%, respectively. Subsequent fires caused cumulative reductions in ecosystem carbon and nitrogen stocks by 68% and 44% from the original ecosystem carbon and nitrogen stocks, respectively. The analyses of carbon budgets calculated by vegetation composition and stable isotopic δ13C values indicate that 84% of forest-derived carbon is lost at grassland, whereas the gain of grass-derived carbon only compensates 18% for this loss. Such significant losses in ecosystem carbon and nitrogen stocks suggest that the effects of repeated fires have substantial impacts on ecosystem and soil carbon and nitrogen cycling.

Fuel load is a primary determinant of fire spread in Australian forests. In east Australian forests, litter and canopy fuel loads and hence fire hazard are thought to be highest at and beyond steady-state fuel loads 15-20 years post-fire. Current methods used to predict fuel loads often rely on course-scale vegetation maps and simple time-since-fire relationships which mask fine-scale processes influencing fuel loads. Here we use Light Detecting and Remote Sensing technology (LiDAR) and field surveys to quantify post-fire mid-story and crown canopy fuel accumulation and fire hazard in Dry Sclerophyll Forests of the Sydney Basin (Australia) at fine spatial-scales (20 × 20 m cell resolution). Fuel cover was quantified in three strata important for crown fire propagation (0.5-4 m, 4-15 m, >15 m) over a 144 km(2) area subject to varying fire fuel ages. Our results show that 1) LiDAR provided a precise measurement of fuel cover in each strata and a less precise but still useful predictor of surface fuels, 2) cover varied greatly within a mapped vegetation class of the same fuel age, particularly for elevated fuel, 3) time-since-fire was a poor predictor of fuel cover and crown fire hazard because fuel loads important for crown fire propagation were variable over a range of fire fuel ages between 2 and 38 years post-fire, and 4) fuel loads and fire hazard can be high in the years immediately following fire. Our results show the benefits of spatially and temporally specific in situ fuel sampling methods such as LiDAR, and are widely applicable for fire management actions which aim to decrease human and environmental losses due to wildfire. PMID:27558828

Boreal forestfires and Alberta oil sands represent two major co-located trace gas emission sources within the boreal ecosystem. During the airborne ARCTAS mission in summer 2008, UC-Irvine performed the most comprehensive characterization of halocarbon emissions from boreal forestfires to date. In summer 2008 and 2010 we also performed the first independent characterizations of halocarbon emissions from Alberta's oil sands industry. In both cases the measurements were made using whole air sampling followed by gas chromatography analysis using electron capture detection and mass spectrometer detection. In the case of boreal forestfires, of 26 speciated halocarbons that were measured, only the simplest halocarbons were emitted from the fires (CH3Cl, CH3Br, CH3I, 1,2-C2H4Cl2, C2H5Cl and CH2Br2) (Simpson et al., 2011). These compounds were released in relatively small quantities and together they represented <0.3% of the total carbon released from boreal forestfires in the form of non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs). Even though CH3Cl was the most abundantly emitted halocarbon, its average global emission from boreal forestfires (0.011 ± 0.003 Tg yr-1) was very small compared to its global source budget. The poly-chlorinated compounds CH2Cl2, CHCl3 and CH3CCl3 were not released from the fires. In the case of the Alberta oil sands, based on airborne measurements during the ARCTAS mission, 15 of 26 measured halocarbons were statistically enhanced over the oil sands compared to local background values (Simpson et al., 2010). The short-lived solvents C2HCl3, C2Cl4, C2H5Cl and CHCl3 were the most strongly enhanced halocarbons, with maximum values that were 1.5-34× the local background. A subsequent ground-based study in 2010 detected even stronger halocarbon enhancements downwind of upgraders and tailings sand at the oil sands surface mining sites. For example C2HCl3 and CHBrCl2 mixing ratios were up to 60-85× the local background values. Long

Closed-circuit television is superior to conventional smoke or heat sensors for detectingfires in large open spaces. Single TV camera scans entire area, whereas many conventional sensors and maze of interconnecting wiring might be required to get same coverage. Camera is monitored by person who would trip alarm if fire were detected, or electronic circuitry could process camera signal for fully-automatic alarm system.

Fire activity in boreal forests will substantially increase with prolonged growing seasons under a warming climate. This trend poses challenges to managing fires in boreal forest landscapes. A fire environment zone map offers a basis for evaluating these fire-related problems and designing more effective fire management plans to improve the allocation of management resources across a landscape. Toward that goal, we identified three fire environment zones across boreal forest landscapes in northeastern China using analytical methods to identify spatial clustering of the environmental variables of climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity. The three fire environment zones were found to be in strong agreement with the spatial distributions of the historical fire data (occurrence, size, and frequency) for 1966-2005. This paper discusses how the resulting fire environment zone map can be used to guide forestfire management and fire regime prediction. PMID:25747370

Forestfires affect soil physical, chemical and mineralogical properties. However, the magnitude of these changes depends on both fire properties, such as the peak temperature reached and duration or depth achieved; and initial soil properties (soil type) as for example soil moisture, organic matter content or soil structure characteristics. Although many works have studied the effects of fire on the chemical properties of different soil types, its effects on Andisols properties have been omitted until now. Taking into account the high susceptibility to drying processes showed by the properties of Andisols affected by land use changes, it could be expected that the fire effects on their chemical properties may differ from those shown by other types of soil. In this study, the main chemical properties in addition to the specific andic properties of burned pine forest Andisols were compared to their unburned control. The chemical properties of ashes found after fire at the soil surface were also studied. The results show a slightly increase in EC and pH after the fire due mainly to the higher content of cations of the soil solution. Ashes derived from the vegetation and soil organic matter consumption by fire could be the main source of these elements in the soils after a fire, as they showed a high cation content. However, the rise in EC and pH is lower than the reported by most authors for other soil types. This behaviour could be related to the higher organic matter content of this soils, even after fire, and the buffering effect of organic compounds on the soil EC and pH changes after the fire. As other authors have shown, a decrease in both the total and active organic content after the fire was also observed as a result of the fire event. The specific andic properties of Andisols were also affected. The P retention of these soils slightly declines as a consequence of fire, while the content of short-range-order products was also modified, but no statistically

Fire activity has increased across the boreal forest biome in conjuction with climate warming and drying. Because these forests contain a large proportion of global terrestrial carbon (C) stocks, there has been great interest in understanding feedbacks between a changing fire regime and climate warming. An important mechanism by which increased fire activity may alter boreal C balance is by consuming the soil organic layer (SOL). Fire removal of the SOL may alter germination microsites and tree recruitment, thereby altering forest successional trajectories and C accumulation and storage. In permafrost soils, loss of the insulating SOL can increase soil temperature and active layer depth, impacting growth and survival conditions for both soil microbes and vegetation. To assess fire severity effects on permafrost soils and tree recruitment, we conducted plot-level experimental burns in July 2012 in a larch forest near Cherskii, Siberia. We achieved four burn severity treatments based on residual SOL depths: control, low (> 8 cm), moderate (5-8 cm), and high severity (2-5 cm). For two growing seasons post-fire, we measured thaw depth, soil moisture, and soil temperature. We sowed larch seeds in fall 2012 and 2013 and quantified seedling establishment and vegetation re-growth for two growing seasons. Immediately post-fire, thaw depth increased rapidly with increasing fire severity, and this trend has persisted for two years. In 2013 and 2014, thaw depth was ~ 40 cm deeper in high severity plots compared to controls, likely due to lower summer soil insulation, higher black char cover, and higher surface soil temperatures. We observed little to no larch recruitment in unburned and low severity plots, but new seedling density was ~5 seedlings m-2 in moderate and high severity plots, which had low cover of other vegetation types and high soil moisture. Findings suggest that increased fire severity may increase larch recruitment and provide favorable soil conditions for

help of forestry data, the wind regime data and the topographic features of the mountain area (elevation, slope declivity, slope aspect). The analysis also consider the insolation degree of mountain slopes, that creates favourable conditions for fire propagation between different canopies. These data layers are integrated within a simple GIS analysis in order to intersect the ignition zones with the fire propagation zones in order to obtain the potential areas to be affected by fire. The digital map show three levels of forestfire susceptibility, differenced on the basis of expert knowledge. The map can be validated from the statistical point of view with the polygons of the forestfire affected areas mapped from Landsat TM, ETM+ and OLI satellite imagery. The mapping results could be integrated within the forest management strategies and especially within the forest cadastre and development maps (updated every ten years). The result can confirm that the data gap in terms of forestfire events can be filled with expert knowledge. References Chuvieco, E, Aguado, I., Jurdao, S., Pettinari, M., Yebra, M., Salas, J., Hantson, S., de la Riva, J., Ibarra, P., Rodrigues, M., Echeverria, M., Azqueta, D., Roman, M., Bastarrika, A., Martinez, S., Recondo, C., Zapico, E., Martinez-Vega F.J. (2012) Integrating geospatial information into fire risk assessment, International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2,2, 69-86. Hantson, S., Padilla, M., Corti., D, Chuvieco, E. (2013) Strenghts and weaknesses of MODIS hotspots to characterize Global fire occurence, Remote Sensing of Environment, 131, 1, 152-159. Mihai, B., Savulescu, I.,Sandric, I. (2007) Change detection analysis (1986/2002) for the alpine, subalpine and forest landscape in Iezer Mountains (Southern Carpathians, Romania), Mountain Research and Development, 27, 250-258.

In this investigation, detection dogs are trained and used in identifying red imported fire ants, Solenopsis invicta Buren, and their nests. The methodology could assist in reducing the frequency and scope of chemical treatments for red imported fire ant management and thus reduce labor costs and chemical use as well as improve control and quarantine efficiency. Three dogs previously trained for customs quarantine were retrained to detect the scents of red imported fire ants. After passing tests involving different numbers of live red imported fire ants and three other ant species--Crematogaster rogenhoferi Mayr, Paratrechina longicornis Latreille, and Pheidole megacephala F.--placed in containers, ajoint field survey for red imported fire ant nests by detection dogs and bait traps was conducted to demonstrate their use as a supplement to conventional detection methods. The most significant findings in this report are (1) with 10 or more red imported fire ants in scent containers, the dogs had >98% chance in tracing the red imported fire ant. Upon the introduction of other ant species, the dogs still achieved on average, a 93% correct red imported fire ant indication rate. Moreover, the dogs demonstrated great competence in pinpointing emerging and smaller red imported fire ant nests in red imported fire ant-infested areas that had been previously confirmed by bait trap stations. (2) Along with the bait trap method, we also discovered that approximately 90% of red imported fire ants foraged within a distance of 14 m away from their nests. The results prove detection dogs to be most effective for red imported fire ant control in areas that have been previously treated with pesticides and therefore containing a low density of remaining red imported fire ant nests. Furthermore, as a complement to other red imported fire ant monitoring methods, this strategy will significantly increase the efficacy of red imported fire ant control in cases of individual mount treatment

Global fire activity is an important contributor to the atmospheric trace gas and aerosol burdens. New burned area datasets and top-down constraints from atmospheric concentration measurements of pyrogenic gases have decreased the large uncertainty in fire emissions estimates, but little is known about the contribution of deforestation, agricultural waste, peat, forest, and savanna fires to total global fire emissions. Here we used a revised version of the CASA biogeochemical model and improved satellite-derived estimates of area burned, fire activity, and plant productivity to calculate fire emissions for the 1997-2008 period on a 0.5°×0.5° spatial resolution with a monthly time step. For November 2000 onwards, estimates were based on burned area, active firedetections, and plant productivity from the MODIS sensor. For this time period we also calculated the breakdown of emissions into different sources. We used TRMM-VIRS and ATSR data to extend our fire time series back in time, combined with AVHRR-derived plant productivity in the pre-MODIS era. Average global fire carbon emissions were 1.9 Pg C / year with significant interannual variability over 1997-2001 (2.6 Pg C / year in 1998 and 1.5 Pg C / year in 2001) while emissions over 2002-2007 were relatively constant (varying between 1.9 and 2.0 Pg C / year), before declining in 2008 (1.6 Pg C / year). Over 2002-2007, interannual variability was still large on regional scales but on a global scale high fire years in some regions were balanced by low fire years in other regions. In the MODIS era (2001 onwards), most carbon losses were the result of fires in (wooded) savannas (68%) with lower contributions from deforestation (13%), forest (12%), agricultural waste (4%), and tropical peat fires (3%). On regional scales, these contributions vary to a large degree, and the contribution of peat fires would increase when including the 1997/1998 El Niño period with record-high fire emissions in Equatorial Asia. For

During periods of drought when surface water supplies are severely limited, wildland forestfires tend to become more frequent and often can grow into major fires that threaten valuable timber, real estate, and even human lives. Fire-fighting crews are critically dependent upon accurate and timely weather data to help ensure that individuals are not inadvertently exposed to dangerous conditions and to enhance normal fire-fighting activities. To that end, the use of an eye-safe, portable lidar for remote wildland fire and smoke detection is described.

Lidar (light detection and ranging) presents better sensitivity than fire surveillance based on imaging. However, the price of conventional lidar equipment is often too high as compared to passive firedetection instruments. We describe possibilities to downscale the technology. First, a conventional lidar, capable of smoke-plume detection up to ~10 km, may be replaced by an industrially manufactured solid-state laser rangefinder. This reduces the detection range to about 5 km, but decreases the purchase price by one order of magnitude. Further downscaling is possible by constructing the lidar smoke sensor on the basis of a low-cost laser diode.

During a 5-d period that commenced on August 30, 1987, dry lightning strikes ignited more than 1,500 fires that destroyed in excess of 600,000 acres of California forests. To evaluate the public health impact of the smoke on the general population, all hospital emergency rooms located in the six counties most severely affected by smoke or fire were surveyed. Selected hospital information was abstracted for a 2 1/2-wk period during the fires and during two reference periods. During the period of major forestfire activity, visits of persons with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease increased in number (observed/expected ratios of 1.4 and 1.3, respectively), as did visits of persons with sinusitis, upper respiratory infections, and laryngitis. A few patients with acute respiratory or eye irritation also visited the emergency rooms. Even recognizing the limited sensitivity of emergency room surveys, the overall public health impact was relatively modest. The increased respiratory morbidity detected in this survey, however, supports the notion that persons with pre-existing respiratory disease represent a sensitive subpopulation, who should be targeted for purposes of public health intervention when exposure to forestfire smoke is likely.

Across the continental United States, the BlueSky Smoke Modeling Framework provides hourly forestfire emissions forecasts and calculates the concentrations of hazardous compounds 72 hours in advance. Though a traditional computational model itself, the BlueSky Framework pulls together the results from a number of different independent models for fire and fuel information, combustion of fuel, and speciated emissions calculations to produce its operational forecasts of fire-related emissions and smoke dispersals. One aspect of forestfire emissions that is of particular concern is small particulate matter, particularly microscopic particles with diameters less than 2.5 micrometers. These particles, known as PM2.5, are small enough to penetrate lung tissue and cause serious health problems in high concentrations. To assess the skill of the BlueSky Gateway, a system that uses the BlueSky Framework and the Community MultiScale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to forecast PM2.5 surface concentrations, Strand et al. compared the modeled estimates for two Californian forest wildfire events against observations.

Pervasive warming can lead to chronic stress on forest trees, which may contribute to mortality resulting from fire-caused injuries. Longitudinal analyses of forest plots from across the western US show that high pre-fire climatic water deficit was related to increased post-fire tree mortality probabilities. This relationship between climate and fire was present after accounting for fire defences and injuries, and appeared to influence the effects of crown and stem injuries. Climate and fire interactions did not vary substantially across geographical regions, major genera and tree sizes. Our findings support recent physiological evidence showing that both drought and heating from fire can impair xylem conductivity. Warming trends have been linked to increasing probabilities of severe fire weather and fire spread; our results suggest that warming may also increase forestfire severity (the number of trees killed) independent of fire intensity (the amount of heat released during a fire). PMID:23869626

Pervasive warming can lead to chronic stress on forest trees, which may contribute to mortality resulting from fire-caused injuries. Longitudinal analyses of forest plots from across the western US show that high pre-fire climatic water deficit was related to increased post-fire tree mortality probabilities. This relationship between climate and fire was present after accounting for fire defences and injuries, and appeared to influence the effects of crown and stem injuries. Climate and fire interactions did not vary substantially across geographical regions, major genera and tree sizes. Our findings support recent physiological evidence showing that both drought and heating from fire can impair xylem conductivity. Warming trends have been linked to increasing probabilities of severe fire weather and fire spread; our results suggest that warming may also increase forestfire severity (the number of trees killed) independent of fire intensity (the amount of heat released during a fire).

Wildfire simulators based on empirical or physical models need to be locally calibrated and validated when used under conditions that differ from those where the simulators were originally developed. This study aims to calibrate FARSITE fire spread model considering a set of recent wildfires occurred in Northern Iran forests. Site specific fuel models in the study areas were selected by sampling the main natural vegetation type complexes and assigning standard fuel models. Overall, simulated fires presented reliable outputs that accurately replicated the observed fire perimeters and behavior. Standard fuel models of Scott and Burgan (2005) afforded better accuracy in the simulated fire perimeters than the standard fuel models of Anderson (1982). The best match between observed and modeled burned areas was observed on herbaceous type fuel models. Fire modeling showed a high potential for estimating spatial variability in fire spread and behavior in the study areas. This work represents a first step in the application of fire spread modeling on Northern Iran for wildfire risk monitoring and management.

Fire frequency and size are two important parameters describing fire characteristics. Exploring the spatial variation of fire characteristics and understanding the environmental controls are indispensable to fire prediction and sustainable forest landscape management. To illustrate the spatial variation of forestfire characteristics over China and to quantitatively determine the relative contribution of each of the environmental controls to this variation, forestfire characteristic data (mean number of forestfires and mean burned forest area) and environmental data (climate, land use, vegetation type and topography) at provincial level were derived. These data sets can potentially serve as a foundation for future studies relating to fire risk assessment, carbon emission by forestfires, and the impact of climate change on fire characteristics. This data article contains data related to the research article entitled "Environmental controls on the characteristics of mean number of forestfires and mean forest area burned (1987-2007) in China" by chang et al. [1]. PMID:26288802

Recent drought events underscore the vulnerability of Amazon forests to understorey fires. The long-term impact of fires on biodiversity and forest carbon stocks depends on the frequency of fire damages and deforestation rates of burned forests. Here, we characterized the spatial and temporal dynamics of understorey fires (1999–2010) and deforestation (2001–2010) in southern Amazonia using new satellite-based estimates of annual fire activity (greater than 50 ha) and deforestation (greater than 10 ha). Understorey forestfires burned more than 85 500 km2 between 1999 and 2010 (2.8% of all forests). Forests that burned more than once accounted for 16 per cent of all understorey fires. Repeated fire activity was concentrated in Mato Grosso and eastern Pará, whereas single fires were widespread across the arc of deforestation. Routine fire activity in Mato Grosso coincided with annual periods of low night-time relative humidity, suggesting a strong climate control on both single and repeated fires. Understorey fires occurred in regions with active deforestation, yet the interannual variability of fire and deforestation were uncorrelated, and only 2.6 per cent of forests that burned between 1999 and 2008 were deforested for agricultural use by 2010. Evidence from the past decade suggests that future projections of frontier landscapes in Amazonia should separately consider economic drivers to project future deforestation and climate to project fire risk. PMID:23610169

Recent drought events underscore the vulnerability of Amazon forests to understorey fires. The long-term impact of fires on biodiversity and forest carbon stocks depends on the frequency of fire damages and deforestation rates of burned forests. Here, we characterized the spatial and temporal dynamics of understorey fires (1999-2010) and deforestation (2001-2010) in southern Amazonia using new satellite-based estimates of annual fire activity (greater than 50 ha) and deforestation (greater than 10 ha). Understorey forestfires burned more than 85 500 km(2) between 1999 and 2010 (2.8% of all forests). Forests that burned more than once accounted for 16 per cent of all understorey fires. Repeated fire activity was concentrated in Mato Grosso and eastern Pará, whereas single fires were widespread across the arc of deforestation. Routine fire activity in Mato Grosso coincided with annual periods of low night-time relative humidity, suggesting a strong climate control on both single and repeated fires. Understorey fires occurred in regions with active deforestation, yet the interannual variability of fire and deforestation were uncorrelated, and only 2.6 per cent of forests that burned between 1999 and 2008 were deforested for agricultural use by 2010. Evidence from the past decade suggests that future projections of frontier landscapes in Amazonia should separately consider economic drivers to project future deforestation and climate to project fire risk. PMID:23610169

Most of fire severity studies use field measures of composite burn index (CBI) to represent forestfire severity and fit the relationships between CBI and Landsat imagery derived differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR) to predict and map fire severity at unsampled locations. However, less attention has been paid on the multi-strata forestfire severity, which represents fire activities and ecological responses at different forest layers. In this study, using field measured fire severity across five forest strata of dominant tree, intermediate-sized tree, shrub, herb, substrate layers, and the aggregated measure of CBI as response variables, we fit statistical models with predictors of Landsat TM bands, Landsat derived NBR or dNBR, image differencing, and image ratioing data. We model multi-strata forestfire in the historical recorded largest wildfire in California, the Big Sur Basin Complex fire. We explore the potential contributions of the post-fire Landsat bands, image differencing, image ratioing to fire severity modeling and compare with the widely used NBR and dNBR. Models using combinations of post-fire Landsat bands perform much better than NBR, dNBR, image differencing, and image ratioing. We predict and map multi-strata forestfire severity across the whole Big Sur fire areas, and find that the overall measure CBI is not optimal to represent multi-strata forestfire severity.

We used a dynamic, long-term mass balance approach to track cumulative carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) losses to fire in boreal Manitoba over the 6500 years since deglaciation. Estimated C losses to decomposition and fire, combined with measurements of N pools in mature and burned forest floors, suggest that loss of N by combustion has likely resulted in a long-term loss that exceeds the amount of N stored in soil today by 2 to 3 times. These estimates imply that biological N fixation rates could be as high as 5 to 10 times atmospheric deposition rates in boreal regions. At the site scale, the amount of N lost is due to N content of fuels, which varies by stand type and fire severity, which in turn vary with climate and fire dynamics. The interplay of fire frequency, fire severity, and N partitioning during regrowth are important for understanding rates and sustainability of nutrient and carbon cycling over millenia and over broad regions.

Climate-driven changes in the fire regime within boreal forest ecosystems are likely to have important effects on carbon cycling and species composition. In the context of improving fire management options and developing more realistic scenarios of future change, it is important to understand how meteorology regulates different aspects of fire dynamics, including ignition, daily fire spread, and cumulative annual burned area. Here we combined Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) active fires (MCD14ML), MODIS imagery (MOD13A1) and ancillary historic fire perimeter information to produce a data set of daily fire spread maps for Alaska during 2002-2011. This approach provided a spatial and temporally continuous representation of fire progression and a precise identification of ignition and extinction locations and dates for each wildfire. The fire-spread maps were analyzed with daily vapor pressure deficit (VPD) observations from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) and lightning strikes from the Alaska Lightning Detection Network (ALDN). We found a significant relationship between daily VPD and likelihood that a lightning strike would develop into a fire ignition. In the first week after ignition, above average VPD increased the probability that fires would grow to large or very large sizes. Strong relationships also were identified between VPD and burned area at several levels of temporal and spatial aggregation. As a consequence of regional coherence in meteorology, ignition, daily fire spread, and fire extinction events were often synchronized across different fires in interior Alaska. At a regional scale, the sum of positive VPD anomalies during the fire season was positively correlated with annual burned area during the NARR era (1979-2011; R2 = 0.45). Some of the largest fires we mapped had slow initial growth, indicating opportunities may exist for suppression efforts to adaptively manage these forests for climate change. The results

Forests deliver a number of ecosystem services, including clean water. When forests are disturbed by wildfire, the timing and quantity of runoff can be altered, and the quality can be severely degraded. A modeling study for about 1500 km2 in the Upper Mokelumne River Watershed in California was conducted to determine the risk of wildfire and the associated potential sediment delivery should a wildfire occur, and to calculate the potential reduction in sediment delivery that might result from fuel reduction treatments. The first step was to predict wildfire severity and probability of occurrence under current vegetation conditions with FlamMap fire prediction tool. FlamMap uses current vegetation, topography, and wind characteristics to predict the speed, flame length, and direction of a simulated flame front for each 30-m pixel. As the first step in the erosion modeling, a geospatial interface for the WEPP model (GeoWEPP) was used to delineate approximately 6-ha hillslope polygons for the study area. The flame length values from FlamMap were then aggregated for each hillslope polygon to yield a predicted fire intensity. Fire intensity and pre-fire vegetation conditions were used to estimate fire severity (either unburned, low, moderate or high). The fire severity was combined with soil properties from the STATSGO database to build the vegetation and soil files needed to run WEPP for each polygon. Eight different stochastic climates were generated to account for the weather variability within the basin. A modified batching version of GeoWEPP was used to predict the first-year post-fire sediment yield from each hillslope and subwatershed. Estimated sediment yields ranged from 0 to more than 100 Mg/ha, and were typical of observed values. The polygons that generated the greatest amount of sediment or that were critical for reducing fire spread were identified, and these were "treated" by reducing the amount of fuel available for a wildfire. The erosion associated with

Fires are known to alter the carbon balance of forests by direct/consumptive or indirect/non-consumptive effects, but detailed representation of fire-induced combustion and mortality is generally lacking in carbon cycle models. Existing approaches fail to incorporate details on the direct and indirect consumption of carbon in individual pools (e.g. foliage, stem, and roots), and ignore severity-dependence of these effects. The few studies that do incorporate detailed parameterization have focused only on localized areas or single fires. Still other studies lack representation of fire associated inter-pool carbon transfer processes needed to characterize post-fire carbon dynamics through time. This study reviews the existing literature (e.g. restoration ecology and post-fire mortality studies) on fires across the whole of western U.S. forests to derive a comprehensive and detailed parameterization of fire effects suitable for incorporation in the Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) carbon cycle model. This study relies on a comprehensive integration of remote sensing, field observations and biogeochemical modeling based analysis. Post-fire carbon fluxes are derived as a function of forest type, productivity and fire severity using a technique based on merging Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data, CASA carbon cycle modeling, 30 m spatial resolution Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) fire severity observations, and additional remotely sensed observations (e.g. temperature, precipitation and Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR)). As such, we obtain characteristic carbon trajectories and regional carbon flux estimates specific to forest types and fire severity levels in the western U.S. forests. This research elucidates new insights on carbon fluxes by performing an intensive and detailed literature survey of post-fire vegetation mortality studies in order to parameterize forest type and fire severity associated effects and processes in

Between May 6 and May 18, 2000, the Cerro Grande/Los Alamos wildfire burned approximately 43,000 acres (17,500 ha) and 235 residences in the town of Los Alamos, NM. Initial estimates of forest damage included 17,000 acres (6,900 ha) of 70-100% tree mortality. Restoration efforts following the fire were complicated by the large scale of the fire, and by the presence of extensive natural and man-made hazards. These conditions forced a reliance on remote sensing techniques for mapping and classifying the burn region. During and after the fire, remote-sensing data was acquired from a variety of aircraft-based and satellite-based sensors, including Landsat 7. We now report on the application of a machine learning technique, implemented in a software package called GENIE, to the classification of forestfire burn severity using Landsat 7 ETM+ multispectral imagery. The details of this automatic classification are compared to the manually produced burn classification, which was derived from field observations and manual interpretation of high-resolution aerial color/infrared photography.

Changes in weather and land use are transforming the spatial and temporal characteristics of fire regimes in Amazonia, with important effects on the functioning of dense (i.e., closed-canopy), open-canopy, and transitional forests across the Basin. To quantify, document, and describe the characteristics and recent changes in forestfire regimes, we sampled 6 million ha of these three representative forests of the eastern and southern edges of the Amazon using 24 years (1983-2007) of satellite-derived annual forestfire scar maps and 16 years of monthly hot pixel information (1992-2007). Our results reveal that changes in forestfire regime properties differentially affected these three forest types in terms of area burned and fire scar size, frequency, and seasonality. During the study period, forestfires burned 15% (0.3 million ha), 44% (1 million ha), and 46% (0.6 million ha) of dense, open, and transitional forests, respectively. Total forest area burned and fire scar size tended to increase over time (even in years of average rainfall in open canopy and transitional forests). In dense forests, most of the temporal variability in fire regime properties was linked to El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-related droughts. Compared with dense forests, transitional and open forests experienced fires twice as frequently, with at least 20% of these forests' areas burning two or more times during the 24-year study period. Open and transitional forests also experienced higher deforestation rates than dense forests. During drier years, the end of the dry season was delayed by about a month, which resulted in larger burn scars and increases in overall area burned later in the season. These observations suggest that climate-mediated forest flammability is enhanced by landscape fragmentation caused by deforestation, as observed for open and transitional forests in the Eastern portion of the Amazon Basin. PMID:26552259

Russia accounts for about half of the world's forests, most of which are in Siberia. Numerous forestfires, mostly human-caused, and extensive forest harvesting, including illegal logging, have resulted in considerable ecological damage and economic loss. At present, forest inventory agencies assess the effects of fire based on the known forest area burned. Due to potential cost and difficulty of access types and severity of fire effects are normally not assessed. The lack of reliable estimates of ecological and economic impacts of forestfires prevents development of effective approaches for forest management and forestfire protection. Remote sensing and GIS-based technologies provide for the development of fundamental new methods to assess and monitor forest condition and wildfire behavior and effects. Wildfire and insect and disease outbreaks are the main natural factors responsible for partial or complete mortality of forest stands in Siberia. Negative human influences include forest harvesting, mining, industrial pollution, and human-caused fires. Estimating the scale, rate, and severity of disturbance is of key importance for appraising the resulting ecological and economical damage. In this study, we developed a GIS- and satellite-based methodology to appraise forest damage by taking advantage of unique spectral signature of the underlying forest types. Our focus was on an area of intensive forest harvest in the Angara river basin, which includes the southern and central taiga zones. We have assessed the type, extent, and severity of disturbances in vegetation cover and mapped the current condition of disturbed forest sites.

During summer of 2014 the largest wildfire in Swedish modern history occurred. The fire was ignited in a forest close to the Swedish town Sala and incinerated a total of 14 000 ha. The frequency of wildfires is expected to increase, due to effects of climate change such as increased temperature and decreased precipitation during the summer months. Wildfires can have a considerable impact on aquatic ecosystems and previous studies of wildfires have shown elevated concentrations of nutrients, cat- and anions. The area of the fire mainly consists of forestland, peatland and lakes and has been affected by acidification and intensive forestry. To assess the fire severity and the effects on the water chemistry, the fire severity were analyzed and classified using aerial phtographs and high resolution LIDAR data. The analysis indicated that increased fire intensity caused increased fire severity and that drained forested areas were more vulnerable to fire than undrained peatland. Measurements of water chemistry were conducted at nine streams and ten lakes inside the affected area. At two sites sensors for multiple parameters were deployed. During the initial three months of the post-fire period large peaks of ammonia-N and sulphate were observed in the streams and in a majority of the lakes while DOC was suppressed. In one stream Gärsjöbäcken the median concentrations of ammonia-N were 79 times higher after the fire. Due to nitrification the elevated concentrations of ammonia-N-nitrogen caused elevated concentrations of nitrate-nitrogen. The initial peak of sulphate caused a drop in ANC but after the peak had past ANC increased due to elevated concentrations of base cations. Correlation analysis of fire severity and water chemistry indicated that the maximum concentrations of ammonia-N increased with severely burned canopies in drained forested peatlands and in scorched open peatland. In a future climate with increased dry spells extensive ditching operations in

Understory fires in Amazon forests alter forest structure, species composition, and the likelihood of future disturbance. The annual extent of fire-damaged forest in Amazonia remains uncertain due to difficulties in separating burning from other types of forest damage in satellite data. We developed a new approach, the Burn Damage and Recovery (BDR) algorithm, to identify fire-related canopy damages using spatial and spectral information from multi-year time series of satellite data. The BDR approach identifies understory fires in intact and logged Amazon forests based on the reduction and recovery of live canopy cover in the years following fire damages and the size and shape of individual understory burn scars. The BDR algorithm was applied to time series of Landsat (1997-2004) and MODIS (2000-2005) data covering one Landsat scene (path/row 226/068) in southern Amazonia and the results were compared to field observations, image-derived burn scars, and independent data on selective logging and deforestation. Landsat resolution was essential for detection of burn scars less than 50 ha, yet these small burns contributed only 12% of all burned forestdetected during 1997-2002. MODIS data were suitable for mapping medium (50-500 ha) and large (greater than 500 ha) burn scars that accounted for the majority of all fire-damaged forest in this study. Therefore, moderate resolution satellite data may be suitable to provide estimates of the extent of fire-damaged Amazon forest at a regional scale. In the study region, Landsat-based understory fire damages in 1999 (1508 square kilometers) were an order of magnitude higher than during the 1997-1998 El Nino event (124 square kilometers and 39 square kilometers, respectively), suggesting a different link between climate and understory fires than previously reported for other Amazon regions. The results in this study illustrate the potential to address critical questions concerning climate and fire risk in Amazon forests by

The figure shows an instrument incorporating an infrared camera for detecting small hydrogen fires. The instrument has been developed as an improved replacement for prior infrared and ultraviolet instruments used to detect hydrogen fires. The need for this or any such instrument arises because hydrogen fires (e.g., those associated with leaks from tanks, valves, and ducts) pose a great danger, yet they emit so little visible light that they are mostly undetectable by the unaided human eye. The main performance advantage offered by the present instrument over prior hydrogen-fire-detecting instruments lies in its greater ability to avoid false alarms by discriminating against reflected infrared light, including that originating in (1) the Sun, (2) welding torches, and (3) deliberately ignited hydrogen flames (e.g., ullage-burn-off flames) that are nearby but outside the field of view intended to be monitored by the instrument. Like prior such instruments, this instrument is based mostly on the principle of detecting infrared emission above a threshold level. However, in addition, this instrument utilizes information on the spatial distribution of infrared light from a source that it detects. Because the combination of spatial and threshold information about a flame tends to constitute a unique signature that differs from that of reflected infrared light originating in a source not in the field of view, the incidence of false alarms is reduced substantially below that of related prior threshold- based instruments.

Fires in spacecraft are considered a credible risk. To respond to this risk, NASA flew fire detectors on Skylab and the Space Shuttle (STS) and included them in the design for International Space Station Alpha (ISSA). In previous missions (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo), the crew quarters were so cramped that it was not considered credible that the astronauts could fail to observe a fire. The Skylab nodule included approximately 20 UV fire detectors. The space shuttle has 9 ionization detectors in the mid deck and flight deck and Spacelab has six additional ionization detectors. The planned detectors for ISSA are laser-diode, forward-scattering, smoke or particulate detectors. Current plans for the ISSA call for two detectors in the open area of the module and detectors in racks that have both cooling air flow and electrical power. Due to the complete absence of data concerning the nature of particulate and radiant emission from low-g fires, all three of these detector systems were designed based upon 1-g test data. As planned mission durations and complexity increase and the volume of spacecraft increases, the need for and importance of effective, crew independent, firedetection grows significantly. This requires more knowledge concerning low-gravity fires and how they might be detected. To date, no combustion-generated particulate samples have been collected for well-developed microgravity flames. All of the extant data come from drop tower tests and therefore only correspond to the early stages of a fire. The fuel sources were restricted to laminar gas-jet diffusion flames and rapidly overheated wire insulation. These gas-jet drop tower tests indicate, through thermophoretic sampling, that soot primaries and aggregates (groups of primary particles) in micro-g may be significantly larger than those in normal-g (ng). This raises new scientific questions about soot processes as well as practical issues for particulate detection/alarm threshold levels used in on

Runoff from mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans F.Muell.) forested catchments has been shown to decline significantly in the few decades following fire - returning to pre-fire levels in the following centuries - owing to changes in ecosystem water use with stand age in a relationship known as Kuczera's model. We examined this relationship between catchment runoff and stand age by measuring whole-ecosystem exchanges of water using an eddy covariance system measuring forest evapotranspiration (ET) combined with sap-flow measurements of tree water use, with measurements made across a chronosequence of three sites (24, 80 and 296 years since fire). At the 296-year old site eddy covariance systems were installed above the E. regnans overstorey and above the distinct rainforest understorey. Contrary to predictions from the Kuczera curve, we found that measurements of whole-forest ET decreased by far less across stand age between 24 and 296 years. Although the overstorey tree water use declined by 1.8 mm day-1 with increasing forest age (an annual decrease of 657 mm) the understorey ET contributed between 1.2 and 1.5 mm day-1, 45% of the total ET (3 mm day-1) at the old growth forest. ?? CSIRO 2008.

Meteorological conditions, extremely conducive to fire development and spread in the spring of 1987, resulted in forestfires burning over extremely large areas in the boreal forest zone in northeastern China and the southeastern region of Siberia. The great China fire, one of the largest and most destructive forestfires in recent history, occurred during this period in the Heilongjiang Province of China. Satellite imagery is used to examine the development and areal distribution of 1987 forestfires in this region. Overall trace gas emissions to the atmosphere from these fires are determined using a satellite-derived estimate of area burned in combination with fuel consumption figures and carbon emission ratios for boreal forestfires.

Meteorological conditions, extremely conducive to fire development and spread in the spring of 1987, resulted in forestfires burning over extremely large areas in the boreal forest zone in northeastern China and the southeastern region of Siberia. The great China fire, one of the largest and most destructive forestfires in recent history, occurred during this period in the Heilongjiang Province of China. Satellite imagery is used to examine the development and areal distribution of 1987 forestfires in this region. Overall trace gas emissions to the atmosphere from these fires are determined using a satellite-derived estimate of area burned in combination with fuel consumption figures and carbon emission ratios for boreal forestfires.

The effects of burn severity on avian communities are poorly understood, yet this information is crucial to fire management programs. To quantify avian response patterns along a burn severity gradient, we sampled 49 random plots (2001-2002) at the 17351-ha Cerro Grande Fire (2000) in New Mexico, USA. Additionally, pre-fire avian surveys (1986-1988, 1990) created a unique opportunity to quantify avifaunal changes in 13 pre-fire transects (resampled in 2002) and to compare two designs for analyzing the effects of unplanned disturbances: after-only analysis and before-after comparisons. Distance analysis was used to calculate densities. We analyzed after-only densities for 21 species using gradient analysis, which detected a broad range of responses to increasing burn severity: (I) large significant declines, (II) weak, but significant declines, (III) no significant density changes, (IV) peak densities in low- or moderate-severity patches, (V) weak, but significant increases, and (VI) large significant increases. Overall, 71% of the species included in the after-only gradient analysis exhibited either positive or neutral density responses to fire effects across all or portions of the severity gradient (responses III-VI). We used pre/post pairs analysis to quantify density changes for 15 species using before-after comparisons; spatiotemporal variation in densities was large and confounded fire effects for most species. Only four species demonstrated significant effects of burn severity, and their densities were all higher in burned compared to unburned forests. Pre- and post-fire community similarity was high except in high-severity areas. Species richness was similar pre- and post-fire across all burn severities. Thus, ecosystem restoration programs based on the assumption that recent severe fires in Southwestern ponderosa pine forests have overriding negative ecological effects are not supported by our study of post-fire avian communities. This study illustrates the

The effects of burn severity on avian communities are poorly understood, yet this information is crucial to fire management programs. To quantify avian response patterns along a burn severity gradient, we sampled 49 random plots (2001-2002) at the 17 351-ha Cerro Grande Fire (2000) in New Mexico, USA. Additionally, pre-fire avian surveys (1986-1988, 1990) created a unique opportunity to quantify avifaunal changes in 13 pre-fire transects (resampled in 2002) and to compare two designs for analyzing the effects of unplanned disturbances: after-only analysis and before-after comparisons. Distance analysis was used to calculate densities. We analyzed after-only densities for 21 species using gradient analysis, which detected a broad range of responses to increasing burn severity: (I) large significant declines, (II) weak, but significant declines, (III) no significant density changes, (IV) peak densities in low- or moderate-severity patches, (V) weak, but significant increases, and (VI) large significant increases. Overall, 71% of the species included in the after-only gradient analysis exhibited either positive or neutral density responses to fire effects across all or portions of the severity gradient (responses III-VI). We used pre/post pairs analysis to quantify density changes for 15 species using before-after comparisons; spatiotemporal variation in densities was large and confounded fire effects for most species. Only four species demonstrated significant effects of burn severity, and their densities were all higher in burned compared to unburned forests. Pre- and post-fire community similarity was high except in high-severity areas. Species richness was similar pre- and post-fire across all burn severities. Thus, ecosystem restoration programs based on the assumption that recent severe fires in Southwestern ponderosa pine forests have overriding negative ecological effects are not supported by our study of post-fire avian communities. This study illustrates the

Numerical research results of heat transfer in layered tree trunk influenced by heat flux from forestfire presented. The problem solved in two-dimensional statement in Cartesian system of co-ordinates. The typical range of influence parameters of heat flux from forestfire considered. Temperature distributions in different moments of time obtained. Condition of tree damage by forestfire influence is under consideration in this research.

The effects of future fire regimes altered by climate change, and fire management in adaptation to climate change were studied in the boreal forest region of western Canada. Present (1975-90) and future (2080-2100) fire regimes were simulated for several National Parks using data from the Canadian (CGCM1) and Hadley (HadCM3) Global Climate Models (GCM) in separate simulation scenarios. The long-term effects of the different fire regimes on forests were simulated using a stand-level, boreal fire effects model (BORFIRE). Changes in forest composition and biomass storage due to future altered fire regimes were determined by comparing current and future simulation results. This was used to assess the ecological impact of altered fire regimes on boreal forests, and the future role of these forests as carbon sinks or sources. Additional future simulations were run using adapted fire management strategies, including increased fire suppression and the use of prescribed fire to meet fire cycle objectives. Future forest composition, carbon storage and emissions under current and adapted fire management strategies were also compared to determine the impact of various future fire management options. Both of the GCM's showed more severe burning conditions under future fire regimes. This includes fires with higher intensity, greater depth of burn, greater total fuel consumption and shorter fire cycles (or higher rates of annual area burned). The Canadian GCM indicated burning conditions more severe than the Hadley GCM. Shorter fire cycles of future fire regimes generally favoured aspen, birch, and jack pine because it provided more frequent regeneration opportunity for these pioneer species. Black spruce was only minimally influenced by future fire regimes, although white spruce declined sharply. Maintaining representation of pure and mixed white spruce ecosystems in natural areas will be a concern under future fire regimes. Active fire suppression is required in these areas. In

The Tropical Forest and Fire Emissions Experiment (TROFFEE) used laboratory measurements followed by airborne and ground based field campaigns during the 2004 Amazon dry season to quantify the emissions from pristine tropical forest and several plantations as well as the emissions, fuel consumption, and fire ecology of tropical deforestation fires. The airborne campaign used an Embraer 110B aircraft outfitted with whole air sampling in canisters, mass-calibrated nephelometry, ozone by uv absorbance, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and proton-transfer mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) to measure PM10, O3, CO2, CO, NO, NO2, HONO, HCN, NH3, OCS, DMS, CH4, and up to 48 non-methane organic compounds (NMOC). The Brazilian smoke/haze layers extended to 2-3 km altitude, which is much lower than the 5-6 km observed at the same latitude, time of year, and local time in Africa in 2000. Emission factors (EF) were computed for the 19 tropical deforestation fires sampled and they largely compare well to previous work. However, the TROFFEE EF are mostly based on a much larger number of samples than previously available and they also include results for significant emissions not previously reported such as: nitrous acid, acrylonitrile, pyrrole, methylvinylketone, methacrolein, crotonaldehyde, methylethylketone, methylpropanal, "acetol plus methylacetate," furaldehydes, dimethylsulfide, and C1-C4 alkyl nitrates. Thus, we recommend these EF for all tropical deforestation fires. The NMOC emissions were ~80% reactive, oxygenated volatile organic compounds (OVOC). Our EF for PM10 (17.8±4 g/kg) is ~25% higher than previously reported for tropical forestfires and may reflect a trend towards, and sampling of, larger fires than in earlier studies. A large fraction of the total burning for 2004 likely occurred during a two-week period of very low humidity. The combined output of these fires created a massive "mega-plume" >500 km across that we sampled on September 8. The mega

Two-band infrared pyrometers detect small hydrogen fires at greater distances in full daylight being developed. Detectors utilize part of infrared spectrum in which signals from hydrogen flames 10 to the 3rd power to 10 to the 4th power times as intense as ultraviolet region of current detectors. Utilize low-loss infrared lenses for focusing and for limiting fields of view to screen out spurious signals from nearby sources. Working distances of as much as 100 meters possible. Portable, battery-powered unit gives audible alarm, in form of increase in frequency of tone, when aimed at hydrogen fire.

Emissions of polychlorinated dibenzodioxin and polychlorinated dibenzofuran (PCDD/F) from simulated grassland and forestfires were quantitatively sampled to derive emission factors in support of PCDD/F inventory development. Grasses from Kentucky and Minnesota; forest shrubs fro...

Pertinent firedetection and extinguishment references have been identified to further the knowledge of spacecraft fire safety. To broaden the scope of the bibliography, other unusual environments, e.g., aircraft, submarine, ship, have been included. In addition, for a more comprehensive view of the spacecraft fire safety problem, selected subjects are included, e.g., materials flammability, smoke, human behavior. The references will provide the researcher with access to state-of-the-art and historic works. Selected references from the 1960's have been included, but the emphasis is on references published from 1975 to 1987. The references are arranged by very broad categories. Often a paper will cover more than one topic, but for the purposes of this bibliography it will be cited only once.

This study examines opportunities for applying prescribed burning strategies to forest stands to enhance net carbon sequestration and compared prescribed burning strategies with more conventional forestry-based climate change mitigation alternatives, including fire suppression and afforestation. Biomass burning is a major contributor to greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere. Biomass burning has increased by 50% since 1850. Since 1977, the annual extent of burning in the northern temperate and boreal forests has increased dramatically, from six- to nine-fold. Long-term suppression of fires in North America, Russia, and other parts of the world has led to accumulated fuel load and an increase in the destructive power of wildfires. Prescribed burning has been used successfully to reduce the destructiveness of wildfires. However, across vast areas of Russia and other regions, prescribed burning is not a component of forest management practices. Given these factors and the sheer size of the temperate-boreal carbon sink, increasing attention is being focused on the role of these forests in mitigating climate change, and the role of fire management strategies, such as prescribed burning, which could work alongside more conventional forestry-based greenhouse gas offset strategies, such as afforestation.

Wildfires play an active role in the global carbon cycle. While large amounts of carbon dioxide are released, a small fraction of the biomass consumed by the fire is only partially combusted, yielding soot and charcoal. These products, also called black carbon (BC) make up only 1-5% of the biomass burnt, yet they can have a disproportionate effect on both the atmosphere and fluxes in long-term carbon pools. This project specifically considers the fraction that is sequestered in forest soils. Black carbon is not a specific compound, and exists along a continuum ranging from partially burned biomass to pure carbon or graphite. Increasing aromaticity as the result of partial combustion means charcoal is highly resistant to oxidation. Although debated, most studies indicate a turnover time on the order of 500-1,000 years in warm, wet, aerobic soils. Charcoal may function as a long-term carbon sink, however its overall significance depends on its rate of formation and loss. At the landscape level, fire characteristics are one of the major factors controlling charcoal production. A few studies suggest that charcoal production increases with cooler, less-severe fires. However, there are many factors to tease apart, partly because of a lack of specificity in how fire severity is defined. Within this greater context, our lab has been working on a landscape-level study within Routt National Forest, north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In 2002, a large fire swept through a subalpine spruce, fir and lodgepole pine forest. In 2011-2013 we sampled BC pools in 44 plots across a range of fire severities from unburned to severe crown We hypothesized that charcoal stocks will be higher in areas of low severity fire as compared to high severity because of decreased re-combustion of charcoal in the organic soil and increased overall charcoal production due to lower temperatures. In each of our plots we measured charcoal on snags and coarse woody debris, sampled the entire organic

The Saskatchewan ForestFire Control Centre (SFFCC) provided surface meteorological data to BOREAS from its archive. This data set contains hourly surface meteorological data from 18 of the Meteorological stations located across Saskatchewan. Included in these data are parameters of date, time, temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, wind speed, and precipitation. Temporally, the data cover the period of May through September of 1994 and 1995. The data are provided in comma-delimited ASCII files, and are classified as AFM-Staff data. The data files are available on a CD-ROM (see document number 20010000884), or from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC).

forest in Kalimantan, Indonesia and around Chiang Mai, Thailand. But the ground truth data in these areas is lesser than the one in Alaska. Our method needs lots of accurate observed data to make multi-dimensional histogram in the same area. In this study, we can show the system to select wildfire data efficiently from satellite imagery. Furthermore, the development of multi-dimensional histogram from past fire data makes it possible to detect wildfires accurately.

Land use, climate, and fire have markedly shaped Mediterranean ecosystems. While climate and land use are external forcing, wildfire is an integral component of ecosystem functioning which inevitably poses a threat to humans. With a view to gaining an insight into the mechanisms underlying fire dynamics, fire control, and prevention, we formulated a model that predicts the wildfire regime in fire-prone Mediterranean ecoregions. The model is based on the positive feedback between forest expansion following cropland abandonment, fuel abundance, and fire. Our results demonstrate that progressive land abandonment leads to different fire dynamics in the Mediterranean forest ecosystem. Starting at a no-fire regime when the land is almost completely cultivated, the ecosystem reaches a chaotic fire regime, passing through intermediate land development stages characterized by limit cycle fire dynamics. Wildfires are more devastating, albeit more predictable, in these intermediate stages when fire frequency is higher.

In the lidar-dial method, the amount of the water vapor present in the smoke of the vegetable fuel is detected to reduce the number of false alarms. We report the measurements of the smoke backscattering coefficients for the CO2 laser lines 10R20 and 10R18 as determined in an absorption cell for two different vegetable fuels (eucalyptus and conifer). These experimental backscattering coefficients enable us to determine the error to be associated to the water vapor measurements when the traditional first-order approximation is assumed. We find that this first-order approximation is valid for combustion rates as low as 100 g/s.

The attributes of social ecological systems affect the management of commons. Strengthening and enhancing social capital and the enforcement of rules and sanctions aid in the collective action of communities in forestfire management. Using a set of variables drawn from previous studies on the management of commons, we conducted a study across 20 community forest user groups in Central Siwalik, Nepal, by dividing the groups into two categories based on the type and level of their forestfire management response. Our study shows that the collective action in forestfire management is consistent with the collective actions in other community development activities. However, the effectiveness of collective action is primarily dependent on the complex interaction of various variables. We found that strong social capital, strong enforcement of rules and sanctions, and users' participation in crafting the rules were the major variables that strengthen collective action in forestfire management. Conversely, users' dependency on a daily wage and a lack of transparency were the variables that weaken collective action. In fire-prone forests such as the Siwalik, our results indicate that strengthening social capital and forming and enforcing forestfire management rules are important variables that encourage people to engage in collective action in fire management.

The attributes of social ecological systems affect the management of commons. Strengthening and enhancing social capital and the enforcement of rules and sanctions aid in the collective action of communities in forestfire management. Using a set of variables drawn from previous studies on the management of commons, we conducted a study across 20 community forest user groups in Central Siwalik, Nepal, by dividing the groups into two categories based on the type and level of their forestfire management response. Our study shows that the collective action in forestfire management is consistent with the collective actions in other community development activities. However, the effectiveness of collective action is primarily dependent on the complex interaction of various variables. We found that strong social capital, strong enforcement of rules and sanctions, and users' participation in crafting the rules were the major variables that strengthen collective action in forestfire management. Conversely, users' dependency on a daily wage and a lack of transparency were the variables that weaken collective action. In fire-prone forests such as the Siwalik, our results indicate that strengthening social capital and forming and enforcing forestfire management rules are important variables that encourage people to engage in collective action in fire management. PMID:25413128

Understanding the causes and consequences of rapid environmental change is an essential scientific frontier, particularly given the threat of climate- and land use-induced changes in disturbance regimes. In western North America, recent widespread insect outbreaks and wildfires have sparked acute concerns about potential insect–fire interactions. Although previous research shows that insect activity typically does not increase wildfire likelihood, key uncertainties remain regarding insect effects on wildfire severity (i.e., ecological impact). Recent assessments indicate that outbreak severity and burn severity are not strongly associated, but these studies have been limited to specific insect or fire events. Here, we present a regional census of large wildfire severity following outbreaks of two prevalent bark beetle and defoliator species, mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) and western spruce budworm (Choristoneura freemani), across the US Pacific Northwest. We first quantify insect effects on burn severity with spatial modeling at the fire event scale and then evaluate how these effects vary across the full population of insect–fire events (n = 81 spanning 1987–2011). In contrast to common assumptions of positive feedbacks, we find that insects generally reduce the severity of subsequent wildfires. Specific effects vary with insect type and timing, but both insects decrease the abundance of live vegetation susceptible to wildfire at multiple time lags. By dampening subsequent burn severity, native insects could buffer rather than exacerbate fire regime changes expected due to land use and climate change. In light of these findings, we recommend a precautionary approach when designing and implementing forest management policies intended to reduce wildfire hazard and increase resilience to global change.

In this study, we Understand the causes and consequences of rapid environmental change is an essential scientific frontier, particularly given the threat of climate-and land use-induced changes in disturbance regimes. In western North America, recent widespread insect outbreaks and wildfires have sparked acute concerns about potential insect-fire interactions. Although previous research shows that insect activity typically does not increase wildfire likelihood, key uncertainties remain regarding insect effects on wildfire severity (i.e., ecological impact). Recent assessments indicate that outbreak severity and burn severity are not strongly associated, but these studies have been limited to specific insect or fire events. Here, wemore » present a regional census of large wildfire severity following outbreaks of two prevalent bark beetle and defoliator species, mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) and western spruce budworm (Choristoneura freemani), across the US Pacific Northwest. Wefirst quantify insect effects on burn severity with spatial modeling at the fire event scale and then evaluate how these effects vary across the full population of insect-fire events (n = 81 spanning 1987-2011). In contrast to common assumptions of positive feedbacks, we find that insects generally reduce the severity of subsequent wildfires. Specific effects vary with insect type and timing, but both insects decrease the abundance of live vegetation susceptible to wildfire at multiple time lags. By dampening subsequent burn severity, native insects could buffer rather than exacerbate fire regime changes expected due to land use and climate change. In light of these findings, we recommend a precautionary approach when designing and implementing forest management policies intended to reduce wildfire hazard and increase resilience to global change.« less

A study in modeling fire hazard assessment will be essential in establishing an effective forestfire management system especially in controlling and preventing peat fire. In this paper, we have used geographic information system (GIS), in combination with other geoinformation technologies such as remote sensing and computer modeling, for all aspects of wild land fire management. Identifying areas that have a high probability of burning is an important component of fire management planning. The development of spatially explicit GIS models has greatly facilitated this process by allowing managers to map and analyze variables contributing to fire occurrence across large, unique geographic units. Using the model and its associated software engine, the fire hazard map was produced. Extensive avenue programming scripts were written to provide additional capabilities in the development of these interfaces to meet the full complement of operational software considering various users requirements. The system developed not only possesses user friendly step by step operations to deliver the fire vulnerability mapping but also allows authorized users to edit, add or modify parameters whenever necessary. Results from the model can support fire hazard mapping in the forest and enhance alert system function by simulating and visualizing forestfire and helps for contingency planning.

The forest area in the western United States that burns annually is increasing with warmer temperatures, more frequent droughts, and higher fuel densities. Studies that examine fire effects for regional carbon balances have tended to either focus on individual fires as examples or adopt generalizations without considering how forest type, fire severity, and regional climate influence carbon legacies. This study provides a more detailed characterization of fire effects and quantifies the full carbon impacts in relation to direct emissions, slow release of fire-killed biomass, and net carbon uptake from forest regrowth. We find important variations in fire-induced mortality and combustion across carbon pools (leaf, live wood, dead wood, litter, and duff) and across low- to high-severity classes. This corresponds to fire-induced direct emissions from 1984 to 2008 averaging 4 TgC/yr and biomass killed averaging 10.5 TgC/yr, with average burn area of 2723 sq km/yr across the western United States. These direct emission and biomass killed rates were 1.4 and 3.7 times higher, respectively, for high-severity fires than those for low-severity fires. The results show that forest regrowth varies greatly by forest type and with severity and that these factors impose a sustained carbon uptake legacy. The western U.S. fires between 1984 and 2008 imposed a net source of 12.3 TgC/yr in 2008, accounting for both direct fire emissions (9.5 TgC/yr) and heterotrophic decomposition of fire-killed biomass (6.1 TgC yr1) as well as contemporary regrowth sinks (3.3 TgC/yr). A sizeable trend exists toward increasing emissions as a larger area burns annually.

Abstract. Forest structure and species composition in many western U.S. coniferous forests have been altered through fire exclusion, past and ongoing harvesting practices, and livestock grazing over the 20th century. The effects of these activities have been most pronounced in seasonally dry, low and mid-elevation coniferous forests that once experienced frequent, low to moderate intensity, fire regimes. In this paper, we report the effects of Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) forest stand treatments on fuel load profiles, potential fire behavior, and fire severity under three weather scenarios from six western U.S. FFS sites. This replicated, multisite experiment provides a framework for drawing broad generalizations about the effectiveness of prescribed fire and mechanical treatments on surface fuel loads, forest structure, and potential fire severity. Mechanical treatments without fire resulted in combined 1-, 10-, and 100-hour surface fuel loads that were significantly greater than controls at three of five FFS sites. Canopy cover was significantly lower than controls at three of five FFS sites with mechanical-only treatments and at all five FFS sites with the mechanical plus burning treatment; fire-only treatments reduced canopy cover at only one site. For the combined treatment of mechanical plus fire, all five FFS sites with this treatment had a substantially lower likelihood of passive crown fire as indicated by the very high torching indices. FFS sites that experienced significant increases in 1-, 10-, and 100-hour combined surface fuel loads utilized harvest systems that left all activity fuels within experimental units. When mechanical treatments were followed by prescribed burning or pile burning, they were the most effective treatment for reducing crown fire potential and predicted tree mortality because of low surface fuel loads and increased vertical and horizontal canopy separation. Results indicate that mechanical plus fire, fire-only, and mechanical

A synthesis was carried out to examine Alaska’s boreal forestfire regime. During the 2000s, an average of 767 000 ha·year–1 burned, 50% higher than in any previous decade since the 1940s. Over the past 60 years, there was a decrease in the number of lightning-ignited fires, an increase in extreme lightning-ignited fire events, an increase in human-ignited fires, and a decrease in the number of extreme human-ignited fire events. The fraction of area burned from human-ignited fires fell from 26% for the 1950s and 1960s to 5% for the 1990s and 2000s, a result from the change in fire policy that gave the highest suppression priorities to fire events that occurred near human settlements. The amount of area burned during late-season fires increased over the past two decades. Deeper burning of surface organic layers in black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) forests occurred during late-growing-season fires and on more well-drained sites. These trends all point to black spruce forests becoming increasingly vulnerable to the combined changes of key characteristics of Alaska’s fire regime, except on poorly drained sites, which are resistant to deep burning. The implications of these fire regime changes to the vulnerability and resilience of Alaska’s boreal forests and land and fire management are discussed.

A synthesis was carried out to examine Alaska s boreal forestfire regime. During the 2000s, an average of 767 000 ha/year burned, 50% higher than in any previous decade since the 1940s. Over the past 60 years, there was a decrease in the number of lightning-ignited fires, an increase in extreme lightning-ignited fire events, an increase in human-ignited fires, and a decrease in the number of extreme human-ignited fire events. The fraction of area burned from humanignited fires fell from 26% for the 1950s and 1960s to 5% for the 1990s and 2000s, a result from the change in fire policy that gave the highest suppression priorities to fire events that occurred near human settlements. The amount of area burned during late-season fires increased over the past two decades. Deeper burning of surface organic layers in black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) forests occurred during late-growing-season fires and on more well-drained sites. These trends all point to black spruce forests becoming increasingly vulnerable to the combined changes of key characteristics of Alaska s fire regime, except on poorly drained sites, which are resistant to deep burning. The implications of these fire regime changes to the vulnerability and resilience of Alaska s boreal forests and land and fire management are discussed.

Forests sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and in so doing can mitigate the effects of climate change. Fire is a natural disturbance process in many forest systems that releases carbon back to the atmosphere. In dry temperate forests, fires historically burned with greater frequency and lower severity than they do today. Frequent fires consumed fuels on the forest floor and maintained open stand structures. Fire suppression has resulted in increased understory fuel loads and tree density; a change in structure that has caused a shift from low- to high-severity fires. More severe fires, resulting in greater tree mortality, have caused a decrease in forest carbon stability. Fire management actions can mitigate the risk of high-severity fires, but these actions often require a trade-off between maximizing carbon stocks and carbon stability. We discuss the effects of fire on forest carbon stocks and recommend that managing forests on the basis of their specific ecologies should be the foremost goal, with carbon sequestration being an ancillary benefit. ?? 2011 by American Institute of Biological Sciences. All rights reserved.

The effects of forestfires on ecological resources in the area experiencing the burn are well documented in the literature. What is not well known is the effect of smoke and haze generated from forestfires on ecological resources adjacent to or at great distances from the burn ...

Forestfires, as all natural disasters, have the potential to seriously affect both the environment and the social structure of a local community. Unlike some of the natural disasters, such as hurricanes, tornados and tsunamis which are unpredictable, the phenomenon of forestfires could be easily predicted and controlled, since the causes are…

The remaining natural habitat of the critically endangered Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) and Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) is a vast, biologically and topographically diverse area in the Russian Far East (RFE). Although wildland fire is a natural component of ecosystem functioning in the RFE, severe or repeated fires frequently re-set the process of forest succession, which may take centuries to return the affected forests to the pre-fire state and thus significantly alters habitat quality and long-term availability. The frequency of severe fire events has increased over the last 25 years, leading to irreversible modifications of some parts of the species' habitats. Moreover, fire regimes are expected to continue to change toward more frequent and severe events under the influence of climate change. Here we present an approach to developing capabilities for a comprehensive assessment of potential Amur tiger and leopard habitat availability throughout the 21st century by integrating regionally parameterized fire danger and forest growth models. The FAREAST model is an individual, gap-based model that simulates forest growth in a single location and demonstrates temporally explicit forest succession leading to mature forests. Including spatially explicit information on probabilities of fire occurrence at 1 km resolution developed from the regionally specific remotely -sensed data-driven fire danger model improves our ability to provide realistic long-term projections of potential forest composition in the RFE. This work presents the first attempt to merge the FAREAST model with a fire disturbance model, to validate its outputs across a large region, and to compare it to remotely-sensed data products as well as in situ assessments of forest structure. We ran the FAREAST model at 1,000 randomly selected points within forested areas in the RFE. At each point, the model was calibrated for temperature, precipitation, slope, elevation, and fire

Amazonian deforestation rates are used to determine human effects on the global carbon cycle and to measure Brazil's progress in curbing forest impoverishment,,. But this widely used measure of tropical land use tells only part of the story. Here we present field surveys of wood mills and forest burning across Brazilian Amazonia which show that logging crews severely damage 10,000 to 15,000km2yr-1 of forest that are not included in deforestation mapping programmes. Moreover, we find that surface fires burn additional large areas of standing forest, the destruction of which is normally not documented. Forest impoverishment due to such fires may increase dramatically when severe droughts provoke forest leaf-shedding and greater flammability; our regional water-balance model indicates that an estimated 270,000km2 of forest became vulnerable to fire in the 1998 dry season. Overall, we find that present estimates of annual deforestation for Brazilian Amazonia capture less than half of the forest area that is impoverished each year, and even less during years of severe drought. Both logging and fire increase forest vulnerability to future burning, and release forest carbon stocks to the atmosphere, potentially doubling net carbon emissions from regional land-use during severe El Niño episodes. If this forest impoverishment is to be controlled, then logging activities need to be restricted or replaced with low-impact timber harvest techniques, and more effective strategies to prevent accidental forestfires need to be implemented.

The only fully coupled land-atmosphere global climate model predicts a widespread dieback of Amazonian forest cover through reduced precipitation. Although these predictions are controversial, the structural and compositional resilience of Amazonian forests may also have been overestimated, as current vegetation models fail to consider the potential role of fire in the degradation of forest ecosystems. We examine forest structure and composition in the Arapiuns River basin in the central Brazilian Amazon, evaluating post-fireforest recovery and the consequences of recurrent fires for the patterns of dominance of tree species. We surveyed tree plots in unburned and once-burned forests examined 1, 3 and 9 years after an unprecedented fire event, in twice-burned forests examined 3 and 9 years after fire and in thrice-burned forests examined 5 years after the most recent fire event. The number of trees recorded in unburned primary forest control plots was stable over time. However, in both once- and twice-burned forest plots, there was a marked recruitment into the 10-20cm diameter at breast height tree size classes between 3 and 9 years post-fire. Considering tree assemblage composition 9 years after the first fire contact, we observed (i) a clear pattern of community turnover among small trees and the most abundant shrubs and saplings, and (ii) that species that were common in any of the four burn treatments (unburned, once-, twice- and thrice-burned) were often rare or entirely absent in other burn treatments. We conclude that episodic wildfires can lead to drastic changes in forest structure and composition, with cascading shifts in forest composition following each additional fire event. Finally, we use these results to evaluate the validity of the savannization paradigm. PMID:18267911

Portugal is one of the major fire-prone European countries, mainly due to its favourable climatic, topographic and vegetation conditions. Compared to the other Mediterranean countries, the number of events registered here from 1980 up to nowadays is the highest one; likewise, with respect to the burnt area, Portugal is the third most affected country. Portuguese mapped burnt areas are available from the website of the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF). This official geodatabase is the result of satellite measurements starting from the year 1990. The spatial information, delivered in shapefile format, provides a detailed description of the shape and the size of area burnt by each fire, while the date/time information relate to the ignition fire is restricted to the year of occurrence. In terms of a statistical formalism wildfires can be associated to a stochastic point process, where events are analysed as a set of geographical coordinates corresponding, for example, to the centroid of each burnt area. The spatio/temporal pattern of stochastic point processes, including the cluster analysis, is a basic procedure to discover predisposing factorsas well as for prevention and forecasting purposes. These kinds of studies are primarily focused on investigating the spatial cluster behaviour of environmental data sequences and/or mapping their distribution at different times. To include both the two dimensions (space and time) a comprehensive spatio-temporal analysis is needful. In the present study authors attempt to verify if, in the case of wildfires in Portugal, space and time act independently or if, conversely, neighbouring events are also closer in time. We present an application of the spatio-temporal K-function to a long dataset (1990-2012) of mapped burnt areas. Moreover, the multivariate K-function allowed checking for an eventual different distribution between small and large fires. The final objective is to elaborate a 3D

This study used a model of forest dynamics (FORCLIM) and actual forest survey data to demonstrate the effects of various fire regimes on different forest types in the Pacific Northwest. We examined forests in eight ecoregions ranging from wet coastal forests dominated by Pseudotsuga menziesii and other tall conifers to dry interior forests dominated by Pinus ponderosa. Fire effects simulated as elevated mortality of trees based on their species and size did alter forest structure and species composition. Low frequency fires characteristic of wetter forests (return interval >200 yr) had minor effects on composition. When fires were severe, they tended to reduce total basal area with little regard to species differences. High frequency fires characteristic of drier forests (return interval <30 yr) had major effects on species composition and on total basal area. Typically, they caused substantial reductions in total basal area and shifts in dominance toward highly fire tolerant species. With the addition of fire, simulated basal areas averaged across ecoregions were reduced to levels approximating observed basal areas.

Description of new experimental installations for the control of parameters of environment with a view of monitoring of forestfires presented in article. Stationary and mobile variants developed. Typical results of operation of installations during a fire-dangerous season of 2015 in vicinities of Ulan-Ude (Republic Buryatiya, Russia) presented. One-dimensional mathematical model of forest fuel drying which can be used for monitoring of forestfire danger with attraction of environmental parameters data during fire-dangerous season offered. Verification of mathematical model with use of known experimental data spent.

Ecological systems often exhibit resilient states that are maintained through negative feedbacks. In ponderosa pine forests, fire historically represented the negative feedback mechanism that maintained ecosystem resilience; fire exclusion reduced that resilience, predisposing the transition to an alternative ecosystem state upon reintroduction of fire. We evaluated the effects of reintroduced frequent wildfire in unlogged, fire-excluded, ponderosa pine forest in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana, USA. Initial reintroduction of fire in 2003 reduced tree density and consumed surface fuels, but also stimulated establishment of a dense cohort of lodgepole pine, maintaining a trajectory toward an alternative state. Resumption of a frequent fire regime by a second fire in 2011 restored a low-density forest dominated by large-diameter ponderosa pine by eliminating many regenerating lodgepole pines and by continuing to remove surface fuels and small-diameter lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir that established during the fire suppression era. Our data demonstrate that some unlogged, fire-excluded, ponderosa pine forests possess latent resilience to reintroduced fire. A passive model of simply allowing lightning-ignited fires to burn appears to be a viable approach to restoration of such forests. PMID:24147398

In Mediterranean environments in western North America, historic fire regimes in frequent-fire conifer forests are highly variable both temporally and spatially. This complexity influenced forest structure and spatial patterns, but some of this diversity has been lost due to anthropogenic disruption of ecosystem processes, including fire. Information from reference forest sites can help management efforts to restore forests conditions that may be more resilient to future changes in disturbance regimes and climate. In this study, we characterize tree spatial patterns using four-ha stem maps from four old-growth, Jeffrey pine-mixed conifer forests, two with active-fire regimes in northwestern Mexico and two that experienced fire exclusion in the southern Sierra Nevada. Most of the trees were in patches, averaging six to 11 trees per patch at 0.007 to 0.014 ha−1, and occupied 27–46% of the study areas. Average canopy gap sizes (0.04 ha) covering 11–20% of the area were not significantly different among sites. The putative main effects of fire exclusion were higher densities of single trees in smaller size classes, larger proportion of trees (≥56%) in large patches (≥10 trees), and decreases in spatial complexity. While a homogenization of forest structure has been a typical result from fire exclusion, some similarities in patch, single tree, and gap attributes were maintained at these sites. These within-stand descriptions provide spatially relevant benchmarks from which to manage for structural heterogeneity in frequent-fireforest types. PMID:24586472

Fire is an important natural and anthropogenic factor in the dynamics of the boreal forest system. The ecological and environmental impacts of boreal fires depend on fire weather, fuel availability, fire behavior and history of sand development (frequency and size of fires and other biotic and abiotic disturbances, influence of surrounding landscape on successional developments). About 70% of the global boreal forest is in Eurasia, almost all of it in the Russian Federation. It is estimated that in years with high fire danger up to ca. 10 million ha of forest and other land in the Russian Federation are affected by fire. The demand for reliable information on the role of natural and anthropogenic fire and the necessity to develop adequate fire management systems is basically due to globally increasing concerns about (1) impacts of boreal wildfires on atmosphere and climate, (2) changing utilization and ecologically destructive practices in boreal forestry, and (3) possible consequences of global climate change on the boreal forest system.

Siberian boreal forests contribute considerably to the global carbon budget, since they take up vast areas, accumulate large amount of carbon, and are sensitive to climatic changes. Fire is the main forest disturbance factor, covering up to millions of hectares of boreal forests annually, of which the majority is in Siberia. Carbon emissions released from phytomass burning influence atmospheric chemistry and global carbon cycling. Changing climate and land use influence the number and intensity of wildfires, forest state, and productivity, as well as global carbon balance. Fire effects on forest overstory, subcanopy woody layer, and ground vegetation phytomass were estimated on sites in light-conifer forests of the Central Siberia as a part of the project "The Influence of Changing Forestry Practices on the Effects of Wildfire and on Interactions Between Fire and Changing Climate in Central Siberia" supported by NASA (NEESPI). This study focuses on collecting quantitative data and modeling the influence of fires of varying intensity on fire emissions, carbon budget, and ecosystem processes in coniferous stands. Fires have a profound impact on forest-atmospheric carbon exchange and transform forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources lasting long after the time of burning. Our long-term experiments allowed us to identify vegetation succession patterns in taiga Scots pine stands after fires of known behavior. Estimating fire contributions to the carbon budget requires consideration of many factors, including vegetation type and fire type and intensity. Carbon emissions were found to depend on fire intensity and weather. In the first several years after fire, the above-ground phytomass appeared to be strongly controlled by fire intensity. However, the influence of burning intensity on organic matter accumulation was found to decrease with time.

Methods for evaluating the impact of fires within tropical forests are needed as fires become more frequent and human populations and demands on forests increase. Short- and long-term fire effects on soils are determined by the prefire, fire, and postfire environments. We placed these components within a fire-disturbance continuum to guide our literature synthesis and develop an integrated soil burn severity index. The soil burn severity index provides a set of indicators that reflect the range of conditions present after a fire. The index consists of seven levels, an unburned level and six other levels that describe a range of postfire soil conditions. We view this index as a tool for understanding the effects of fires on the forest floor, with the realization that as new information is gained, the index may be modified as warranted. ?? Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2008.

The exclusion of fire from terrestrial ecosystems will result in major changes in landscape structure and composition that, in turn, will result in significant changes in gaseous emissions to the atmosphere. A mechanistic forest successional model, FIRE-BGC (a FIRE BioGeoChemical succession model) is used to investigate long-term trends in gaseous emissions (CO{sub 2}, CO, CH{sub 4}, non-methane hydrocarbons, and NO{sub x}) under present and historical fire regimes for a complex landscape in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. FIRE-BGC simulates long-term fire and stand dynamics on coniferous forest landscapes of the northern Rocky Mountains. FIRE-BGC is an individual tree model created by merging the gap-phase, process-based model FIRESUM with the mechanistic ecosystem biogeochemical model FOREST-BGC.

Land managers use prescribed fire to return a vital process to fire-adapted ecosystems, restore forest structure from a state altered by long-term fire suppression, and reduce wildfire intensity. However, fire often produces favorable conditions for invasive plant species, particularly if it is intense enough to reveal bare mineral soil and open previously closed canopies. Understanding the environmental or fire characteristics that explain post-fire invasive plant abundance would aid managers in efficiently finding and quickly responding to fire-caused infestations. To that end, we used an information-theoretic model-selection approach to assess the relative importance of abiotic environmental characteristics (topoedaphic position, distance from roads), pre-and post-fire biotic environmental characteristics (forest structure, understory vegetation, fuel load), and prescribed fire severity (measured in four different ways) in explaining invasive plant cover in ponderosa pine forest in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Environmental characteristics (distance from roads and post-fireforest structure) alone provided the most explanation of variation (26%) in post-fire cover of Verbascum thapsus (common mullein), but a combination of surface fire severity and environmental characteristics (pre-fireforest structure and distance from roads) explained 36–39% of the variation in post-fire cover of Cirsium arvense (Canada thistle) and all invasives together. For four species and all invasives together, their pre-fire cover explained more variation (26–82%) in post-fire cover than environmental and fire characteristics did, suggesting one strategy for reducing post-fire invasive outbreaks may be to find and control invasives before the fire. Finding them may be difficult, however, since pre-fire environmental characteristics explained only 20% of variation in pre-fire total invasive cover, and less for individual species. Thus, moderating fire intensity or targeting areas

Much uncertainty exists regarding the possible role that gaps in forest canopies play in modulating fire-atmosphere interactions in otherwise horizontally homogeneous forests. This study examines the influence of gaps in forest canopies on atmospheric perturbations induced by a low-intensity fire using the ARPS-CANOPY model, a version of the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) model with a canopy parameterization. A series of numerical experiments are conducted with a stationary low-intensity fire, represented in the model as a line of enhanced surface sensible heat flux. Experiments are conducted with and without forest gaps, and with gaps in different positions relative to the fire line. For each of the four cases considered, an additional simulation is performed without the fire to facilitate comparison of the fire-perturbed atmosphere and the background state. Analyses of both mean and instantaneous wind velocity, turbulent kinetic energy, air temperature, and turbulent mixing of heat are presented in order to examine the fire-perturbed atmosphere on multiple timescales. Results of the analyses indicate that the impact of the fire on the atmosphere is greatest in the case with the gap centered on the fire and weakest in the case with the gap upstream of the fire. It is shown that gaps in forest canopies have the potential to play a role in the vertical as well as horizontal transport of heat away from the fire. Results also suggest that, in order to understand how the fire will alter wind and turbulence in a heterogeneous forest, one needs to first understand how the forest heterogeneity itself influences the wind and turbulence fields without the fire.

Disturbances of any size and magnitude of intensity, whether natural or human-caused, change existing forest conditions and initiate succession to create dynamic and new ecological communities. Effective management of these forest resources, both public and private, requires reliable and timely information about their status and trends. As part of the National Land Cover Database, we have developed a focused change detection method using Landsat imagery to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of existing forest change monitoring capabilities. The Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) derived from Landsat imagery has been widely used for monitoring fire disturbance, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) has been extensively used for indicating the vegetation biomass, or health and vitality status. By integrating these two indices derived from imagery acquired from two-date Landsat images within a growing season, a model was developed to intelligently map the location and quantify the magnitude of forest disturbance and regeneration processes. The model has been tested on four image pairs from different forest regions (Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, and Southwest) of the United States. Initial results showed that the method can map high intensity forest disturbance such as forest harvest and forestfire with high accuracy; it is also sensitive to subtle changes such as forest regeneration, forest commercial thinning, and forest degradation caused by insect damage. The model is simple, effective, and applicable to other regions with forest cover. The approach can provide critical and objective change information on status and trends on forested land for management planning purposes.

Mass Movement (MM) has always been one of the main natural hazards that threatened both the natural and human environments of Lebanon and their occurrence has increased by almost 60% between 1956 and 2008. On the other hand, ForestFire (FF) has emerged to impose as another natural hazard that has destroyed more than 25 % of Lebanon's forests in less than 40 years. The increased FF occurrence is one of the potential detrimental impacts of anthropogenic climate change where high temperatures and current-year drought are strongly associated with an increase in the number of fires and area burned in a variety of forest types. A simple observation shows the coincident trends between MM and FF. This paper investigates the potential impact of FF on MM occurrence in Damour and Nahr Ibrahim watersheds in Lebanon. Preconditioning factors taken into consideration were topography, soil, geology, mean annual precipitation and land cover maps. MM and FF inventory maps were produced through Remote Sensing (RS) using aerial (1956 and 2008) and satellite images (2005 and 2011) in addition to Google Earth Timeline. Furthermore, FF was introduced as the inducing factor whose impact was assessed by the calculation of FF burn severity. This burn severity was extracted from Landsat images (1986-2011) through the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) index. A field study was carried out in order to substantiate the MM inventory. Furthermore, the burn index maps were validated through the Mini-Disk Infiltrometer (MDI), a device which supplies the soil infiltration rate usually after a fire. Following the standardization of the impact factors into layers using Geographic Information System (GIS), the relative importance of these layers for causing MM has been evaluated using modified InfoVal method and a MM Susceptibility Map (MMSM) was generated. Hence, every factor obtained a weight that shows its impact on MM occurrence. Preceded only by Land Cover change, NBR obtained the highest weight making

May and June 2012 were unusually hot and dry in Colorado, which was suffering from a strong drought. A major consequence of this climatic regime was one of the most destructive forestfire seasons in state history, with hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and grassland consumed by flames, hundreds of homes burned, and several lives lost. Many of these fires occurred within range of the newly installed Colorado Lightning Mapping Array (COLMA), which provides high-resolution observations of discharges over a large portion of the state. The COLMA was installed in advance of the Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) project. High-altitude lightning was observed to occur sporadically in the smoke plumes over three major fires that occurred during early summer: Hewlett Gulch, High Park, and Waldo Canyon. Additionally, the Colorado State University CHILL (CSU-CHILL) and Pawnee radars observed the Hewlett Gulch plume electrify with detailed polarimetric and dual-Doppler measurements, and also provided these same measurements for the High Park plume when it was not producing lightning. Meanwhile, local Next Generation Radars (NEXRADs) provided observations of the electrified High Park and Waldo Canyon plumes. All of these plumes also were observed by geostationary meteorological satellites. These observations provide an unprecedented dataset with which to study smoke plume and pyrocumulus electrification. The polarimetric data - low reflectivity, high differential reflectivity, low correlation coefficient, and noisy differential phase - were consistent with the smoke plumes and associated pyrocumulus being filled primarily with irregularly shaped ash particles. Lightning was not observed in the plumes until they reached over 10 km above mean sea level, which was an uncommon occurrence requiring explosive fire growth combined with increased meteorological instability and reduced wind shear. Plume updraft intensification and echo-top growth led the occurrence of

The historical and pre-settlement relationships between drought and wildfire are well documented in North America, with forestfire occurrence and area clearly increasing in response to drought. There is also evidence that drought interacts with other controls (forest productivity, topography, fire weather, management activities) to affect fire intensity, severity, extent, and frequency. Fire regime characteristics arise across many individual fires at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, so both weather and climate—including short- and long-term droughts—are important and influence several, but not all, aspects of fire regimes. We review relationships between drought and fire regimes in United States forests, fire-related drought metrics and expected changes in fire risk, and implications for fire management under climate change. Collectively, this points to a conceptual model of fire on real landscapes: fire regimes, and how they change through time, are products of fuels and how other factors affect their availability (abundance, arrangement, continuity) and flammability (moisture, chemical composition). Climate, management, and land use all affect availability, flammability, and probability of ignition differently in different parts of North America. From a fire ecology perspective, the concept of drought varies with scale, application, scientific or management objective, and ecosystem.

Dendroecological techniques were applied to reconstruct stand-replacing fire history in upper montane forests in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Fourteen stand-replacing fires were dated to 8 unique fire years (1842-1901) using four lines of evidence at each of 12 sites within the upper Rio Grande Basin. The four lines of evidence were (i) quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) inner-ring dates, (ii) fire-killed conifer bark-ring dates, (iii) tree-ring width changes or other morphological indicators of injury, and (iv) fire scars. The annual precision of dating allowed the identification of synchronous stand-replacing fire years among the sites, and co-occurrence with regional surface fire events previously reconstructed from a network of fire scar collections in lower elevation pine forests across the southwestern United States. Nearly all of the synchronous stand-replacing and surface fire years coincided with severe droughts, because climate variability created regional conditions where stand-replacing fires and surface fires burned across ecosystems. Reconstructed stand-replacing fires that predate substantial Anglo-American settlement in this region provide direct evidence that stand-replacing fires were a feature of high-elevation forests before extensive and intensive land-use practices (e.g., logging, railroad, and mining) began in the late 19th century. ?? 2007 NRC.

The historical and presettlement relationships between drought and wildfire are well documented in North America, with forestfire occurrence and area clearly increasing in response to drought. There is also evidence that drought interacts with other controls (forest productivity, topography, fire weather, management activities) to affect fire intensity, severity, extent, and frequency. Fire regime characteristics arise across many individual fires at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, so both weather and climate - including short- and long-term droughts - are important and influence several, but not all, aspects of fire regimes. We review relationships between drought and fire regimes in United States forests, fire-related drought metrics and expected changes in fire risk, and implications for fire management under climate change. Collectively, this points to a conceptual model of fire on real landscapes: fire regimes, and how they change through time, are products of fuels and how other factors affect their availability (abundance, arrangement, continuity) and flammability (moisture, chemical composition). Climate, management, and land use all affect availability, flammability, and probability of ignition differently in different parts of North America. From a fire ecology perspective, the concept of drought varies with scale, application, scientific or management objective, and ecosystem. PMID:27090489

Fire history within the northern larch forests of Central Siberia was studied (65+degN). Fires within this area are predominantly caused by lightning strikes rather than human activity. Mean fire return intervals (FRIs) were found to be 112 +/- 49 years (based on firescars) and 106 +/- 36 years (based on firescars and tree natality dates). FRIs were increased with latitude increase and observed to be about 80 years at 64N, about 200 years near the Arctic Circle and about 300 years nearby the northern range limit of larch stands (approx.71+degN). Northward FRIs increase correlated with incoming solar radiation (r = -0.95). Post- Little Ice Age (LIA) warming (after 1850) caused approximately a doubling of fire events (in comparison with a similar period during LIA). The data obtained support a hypothesis of climate-induced fire frequency increase. Keywords Fire ecology Fire history Fire frequency Siberian wildfires Larch forests Climate change

In the California Sierra Nevada region, increased fire activity over the last 50 years has only occurred in the higher-elevation forests on US Forest Service (USFS) lands, and is not characteristic of the lower-elevation grasslands, woodlands and shrublands on state responsibility lands (Cal Fire). Increased fire activity on USFS lands was correlated with warmer and drier springs. Although this is consistent with recent global warming, we found an equally strong relationship between fire activity and climate in the first half of the 20th century. At lower elevations, warmer and drier conditions were not strongly tied to fire activity over the last 90 years, although prior-year precipitation was significant. It is hypothesised that the fire–climate relationship in forests is determined by climatic effects on spring and summer fuel moisture, with hotter and drier springs leading to a longer fire season and more extensive burning. In contrast, future fire activity in the foothills may be more dependent on rainfall patterns and their effect on the herbaceous fuel load. We predict spring and summer warming will have a significant impact on future fire regimes, primarily in higher-elevation forests. Lower elevation ecosystems are likely to be affected as much by global changes that directly involve land-use patterns as by climate change.

The following are presented: (1) background information on the rocket-triggered lightning project an Kennedy Space Center (KSC); (2) a summary of the forecasting problem; (3) the facilities and equipment available for undertaking field experiments at KSC; (4) previous research activity performed; (5) a description of the atmospheric science field laboratory near Mosquito Lagoon on the KSC complex; (6) methods of data acquisition; and (7) present results. New sources of data for the 1990 field experiment include measuring the electric field in the lower few thousand feet of the atmosphere by suspending field measuring devices below a tethered balloon, and measuring the electric field intensity in clouds and in the atmosphere with aircraft. The latter program began in July of 1990. Also, future prospects for both triggered lightning and forestfire research at KSC are listed.

Background information on the rocket-triggered lightning project at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), a summary of the forecasting problem there, the facilities and equipment available for undertaking field experiments at KSC, previous research activity performed, a description of the atmospheric science field laboratory near Mosquito Lagoon on the KSC complex, methods of data acquisition, and present results are discussed. New sources of data for the 1989 field experiment include measuring the electric field in the lower few thousand feet of the atmosphere by suspending field measuring devices below a tethered balloon. Problems encountered during the 1989 field experiment are discussed. Future prospects for both triggered lightning and lightning-kindled forestfire research at KSC are listed.

In contrast to a few isolated forests in northern Mexico, most forests in the western Untied States have been significantly modified by fire suppression, harvesting, and livestock grazing. The culmination of these past management activities has produced over 20 million ha of US forests with high fire hazards and many of these areas are in need of restoration. Understanding reference conditions is challenging because we have few intact forests functioning under the continuing influence of climate variation, insects, diseases, and frequent fires. This presentation summarizes information from reference sites in northwestern Mexico and contrasts it to current forest structure and fire regimes in southern California forests. Heterogeneity is common in the intact forests of northwestern Mexico. Restoration targets across similar forests in the United States and elsewhere should incorporate variation and not manage for average characteristics at the stand level, replicated for all stands across very large spatial scales. Conservation of the forests in the northwester Mexico is critical because it is the last landscape-scale, old-growth mixed conifer forest in western North America with a relatively intact frequent fire regime.

Knowledge of the causes of forestfires, and of the main driving factors of ignition, is an indispensable step towards effective fire prevention policies. This study analyses the factors driving forestfire ignition in the Mediterranean region including the most common human and environmental factors used for modelling in the European context. Fire ignition factors are compared to spatial and temporal variations of fire occurrence in the region, then are compared to results obtained in other areas of the world, with a special focus on North America (US and Canada) where a significant number of studies has been carried out on this topic. The causes of forestfires are varied and their distribution differs among countries, but may also differ spatially and temporally within the same country. In Europe, and especially in the Mediterranean basin, fires are mostly human-caused mainly due arson. The distance to transport networks and the distance to urban or recreation areas are among the most frequently used human factors in modelling exercises and the Wildland-Urban Interface is increasingly taken into account in the modelling of fire occurrence. Depending on the socio-economic context of the region concerned, factors such as the unemployment rate or variables linked to agricultural activity can explain the ignition of intentional and unintentional fires. Regarding environmental factors, those related to weather, fuel and topography are the most significant drivers of ignition of forestfires, especially in Mediterranean-type regions. For both human and lightning-caused fires, there is a geographical gradient of fire ignition, mainly due to variations in climate and fuel composition but also to population density for instance. The timing of fires depends on their causes. In populated areas, the timing of human-caused fires is closely linked to human activities and peaks in the afternoon whereas, in remote areas, the timing of lightning-caused fires is more linked to

The present text is a summary of research on the relationship between forestfires and human activities. Numerous theories have been created to explain changes in forests during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, and a general understanding has developed in the past 50 years regarding natural fire regimes. The present summary is directed to assess the validity of these theories. A re-analysis of the literature argues that the intense forestfires we experience today are an artifact of human intervention in forest ecology, especially by the reduction of herbivores and are relatively recent, approximately 100,000-250,000 BP. The history of fire, especially in the context of the increased dominance of humans, has produced a progressively fire-adapted ecology, which argues for human-free wildlife areas and against prescribed burns under many circumstances. PMID:12146516

Now the developing research of Agent can help operators to do the routine assignments, by which we can economize the precious resources and improve the real-time image analysis of the computers. This paper firstly makes a brief introduction of the Agent conception. Then we make some discussions about the multispectral images of a certain area, which is based on the concept of Agent. The main objects of this paper are inspections of forest (grassland) fire. The purpose of this paper is to propose three stages with which Agent could monitor the wildly areas and make decision automatically, without operators' intervention. First stage, if the value of pixels are more than a given threshold, Agent will give the operators an alarm and notify the operators that there are something happened; Second stage, analyze data and self-learning; Third stage, according to the database and knowledge database, Agents make decisions. As the decisions will be influenced by many factors, so some models, such as heat sources model, weather model, fire model, vegetation model are needed.

Fires cover millions ha of boreal forests of Russia annually, mostly in Siberia. Wildfire and forest harvesting are the major disturbances in Siberia's boreal zone. Logged areas appear to be highly susceptible to fire due to a combination of high fuel loads and accessibility for human-caused ignition. Fire spreading from logging sites to surrounding forest is a common situation in this region. Changing patterns of timber harvesting increase landscape complexity and can be expected to increase the emissions and ecosystem damage from wildfires, inhibit recovery of natural ecosystems, and exacerbate impacts of wildfire on changing climate and on air quality. Fire effects on pine stands and biomass of surface vegetation were estimated on logged and unlogged sites in the Central Siberia region as a part of the project "The Influence of Changing Forestry Practices on the Effects of Wildfire and on Interactions Between Fire and Changing Climate in Central Siberia" supported by NASA (NEESPI). Fires occurring on logged areas were typically of higher severity than those in unlogged forests, but the specific effects of fire and logging varied widely among forest types and as a result of weather patterns during and prior to the fire. Consumption of surface and ground fuels in spring fires was 25% to 50% of that in summer fires. Estimated carbon emissions due to fire were 2-5 times higher on logged areas compared to undisturbed sites. Post-fire soil respiration decreases found for both site types partially offset carbon losses. Carbon emissions from fire and post-fire ecosystem damage on logged sites are expected to increase under changing climate conditions in Siberia.

The Chinese boreal forest is an important forest resource in China. However, it has been suffering serious disturbances of forestfires, which were caused equally by natural disasters (e.g., lightning) and human activities. The literature on human-caused fires indicates that climate, topography, vegetation, and human infrastructure are significant factors that impact the occurrence and spread of human-caused fires. But the studies on human-caused fires in the boreal forest of northern China are limited and less comprehensive. This paper applied the spatial analysis tools in ArcGIS 10.0 and Logistic regression model to investigate the driving factors of human-caused fires. Our data included the geographic coordinates of human-caused fires, climate factors during year 1974-2009, topographic information, and forest map. The results indicated that distance to railway (x1) and average relative humidity (x2) significantly impacted the occurrence of human-caused fire in the study area. The logistic model for predicting the fire occurrence probability was formulated as P= 1/[11+e-(3.026-0.00011x1-0.047x2)] with an accuracy rate of 80%. The above model was used to predict the monthly fire occurrence during the fire season of 2015 based on the HADCM2 future weather data. The prediction results showed that the high risk of human-caused fire occurrence concentrated in the months of April, May, June and August, while April and May had higher risk of fire occurrence than other months. According to the spatial distribution of possibility of fire occurrence, the high fire risk zones were mainly in the west and southwest of Tahe, where the major railways were located. PMID:26710638

The target of this work was to assess the impact of projected climate change on forest-fire activity in Finland with special emphasis on large-scale fires. In addition, we were particularly interested to examine the inter-model variability of the projected change of fire danger. For this purpose, we utilized fire statistics covering the period 1996-2014 and consisting of almost 20 000 forestfires, as well as daily meteorological data from five global climate models under representative concentration pathway RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The model data were statistically downscaled onto a high-resolution grid using the quantile-mapping method before performing the analysis. In examining the relationship between weather and fire danger, we applied the Canadian fire weather index (FWI) system. Our results suggest that the number of large forestfires may double or even triple during the present century. This would increase the risk that some of the fires could develop into real conflagrations which have become almost extinct in Finland due to active and efficient fire suppression. However, the results reveal substantial inter-model variability in the rate of the projected increase of forest-fire danger, emphasizing the large uncertainty related to the climate change signal in fire activity. We moreover showed that the majority of large fires in Finland occur within a relatively short period in May and June due to human activities and that FWI correlates poorer with the fire activity during this time of year than later in summer when lightning is a more important cause of fires.

Here, the target of this work was to assess the impact of projected climate change on forest-fire activity in Finland with special emphasis on large-scale fires. In addition, we were particularly interested to examine the inter-model variability of the projected change of fire danger. For this purpose, we utilized fire statistics covering the period 1996-2014 and consisting of almost 20,000 forestfires, as well as daily meteorological data from five global climate models under representative concentration pathway RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The model data were statistically downscaled onto a high-resolution grid using the quantile-mapping method before performing the analysis. Inmore » examining the relationship between weather and fire danger, we applied the Canadian fire weather index (FWI) system. Our results suggest that the number of large forestfires may double or even triple during the present century. This would increase the risk that some of the fires could develop into real conflagrations which have become almost extinct in Finland due to active and efficient fire suppression. However, the results reveal substantial inter-model variability in the rate of the projected increase of forest-fire danger, emphasizing the large uncertainty related to the climate change signal in fire activity. We moreover showed that the majority of large fires in Finland occur within a relatively short period in May and June due to human activities and that FWI correlates poorer with the fire activity during this time of year than later in summer when lightning is a more important cause of fires.« less

Biomass burning is a source of carbon, sulphur, and nitrogen compounds which, along with their photochemically generated reaction products, can be transported over very large distances, even traversing oceans. Four years of regular rain and fog-water measurements in the tropical mountain forest at the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes, along an altitude profile between 1800 m and 3185 m, have been carried out. The ion composition of rain and fog-water samples shows frequent episodes of significantly enhanced nitrogen and sulphur, resulting in annual deposition rates of about 5 kg N/ha and 10 kg S/ha into this ecosystem, which are comparable to those of polluted central Europe. By relating back trajectories calculated by means of the FLEXTRA model to the distributions of satellite derived forestfire pixels, it can be shown that most episodes of enhanced ion concentration, with pH values as low as 4.0, can be attributed to biomass burning in the Amazon. First analyses of oxygen isotopes 16O, 17O, and 18O of nitrate in fogwater samples show mass independent fractionation values ranging between 15 and 20 per mille, clearly indicating that nitrate in the samples is a product of atmospheric conversion of precursors, while the isotope data of river samples taken downstream of the research area are grouped in the region of microbial nitrate. This strongly supports the aforementioned trajectory results and shows that the tropical mountain forest in Ecuador, with local pollution sources missing,is "fertilized" by long-range transport of substances originating from forestfires in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and Peru, far upwind of the research site.

Two fixed-threshold Canada Centre for Remote Sensing and European Space Agency (CCRS and ESA) and three contextual GIGLIO, International Geosphere and Biosphere Project, and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (GIGLIO, IGBP, and MODIS) algorithms were used for firedetection with Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data acquired over Canada during the 1995 fire season. The CCRS algorithm was developed for the boreal ecosystem, while the other four are for global application. The MODIS algorithm, although developed specifically for use with the MODIS sensor data, was applied to AVHRR in this study for comparative purposes. Firedetection accuracy assessment for the algorithms was based on comparisons with available 1995 burned area ground survey maps covering five Canadian provinces. Overall accuracy estimations in terms of omission (CCRS=46%, ESA=81%, GIGLIO=75%, IGBP=51%, MODIS=81%) and commission (CCRS=0.35%, ESA=0.08%, GIGLIO=0.56%, IGBP=0.75%, MODIS=0.08%) errors over forested areas revealed large differences in performance between the algorithms, with no relevance to type (fixed-threshold or contextual). CCRS performed best in detecting real forestfires, with the least omission error, while ESA and MODIS produced the highest omission error, probably because of their relatively high threshold values designed for global application. The commission error values appear small because the area of pixels falsely identified by each algorithm was expressed as a ratio of the vast unburned forest area. More detailed study shows that most commission errors in all the algorithms were incurred in nonforest agricultural areas, especially on days with very high surface temperatures. The advantage of the high thresholds in ESA and MODIS was that they incurred the least commission errors.

Vast and disastrous fires occurred on Borneo during the 2015 dry season, pushing Indonesia into the top five carbon emitting countries. The region was affected by a very strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate phenomenon, on par with the last severe event in 1997/98. Fire dynamics in Central Kalimantan were investigated using an innovative sensor offering higher sensitivity to a wider range of fire intensities at a finer spatial resolution (160 m) than heretofore available. The sensor is onboard the TET-1 satellite, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) FireBird mission. TET-1 images (acquired every 2-3 days) from the middle infrared were used to detectfires continuously burning for almost three weeks in the protected peatlands of Sebangau National Park as well as surrounding areas with active logging and oil palm concessions. TET-1 detection capabilities were compared with MODIS active firedetection and Landsat burned area algorithms. Fire dynamics, including fire front propagation speed and area burned, were investigated. We show that TET-1 has improved detection capabilities over MODIS in monitoring low-intensity peatland fire fronts through thick smoke and haze. Analysis of fire dynamics revealed that the largest burned areas resulted from fire front lines started from multiple locations, and the highest propagation speeds were in excess of 500 m/day (all over peat > 2m deep). Fires were found to occur most often in concessions that contained drainage infrastructure but were not cleared prior to the fire season. Benefits of implementing this sensor system to improve current fire management techniques are discussed. Near real-time firedetection together with enhanced fire behavior monitoring capabilities would not only improve firefighting efforts, but also benefit analysis of fire impact on tropical peatlands, greenhouse gas emission estimations as well as mitigation measures to reduce severe fire events in the future. PMID:27486664

Vast and disastrous fires occurred on Borneo during the 2015 dry season, pushing Indonesia into the top five carbon emitting countries. The region was affected by a very strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate phenomenon, on par with the last severe event in 1997/98. Fire dynamics in Central Kalimantan were investigated using an innovative sensor offering higher sensitivity to a wider range of fire intensities at a finer spatial resolution (160 m) than heretofore available. The sensor is onboard the TET-1 satellite, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) FireBird mission. TET-1 images (acquired every 2–3 days) from the middle infrared were used to detectfires continuously burning for almost three weeks in the protected peatlands of Sebangau National Park as well as surrounding areas with active logging and oil palm concessions. TET-1 detection capabilities were compared with MODIS active firedetection and Landsat burned area algorithms. Fire dynamics, including fire front propagation speed and area burned, were investigated. We show that TET-1 has improved detection capabilities over MODIS in monitoring low-intensity peatland fire fronts through thick smoke and haze. Analysis of fire dynamics revealed that the largest burned areas resulted from fire front lines started from multiple locations, and the highest propagation speeds were in excess of 500 m/day (all over peat > 2m deep). Fires were found to occur most often in concessions that contained drainage infrastructure but were not cleared prior to the fire season. Benefits of implementing this sensor system to improve current fire management techniques are discussed. Near real-time firedetection together with enhanced fire behavior monitoring capabilities would not only improve firefighting efforts, but also benefit analysis of fire impact on tropical peatlands, greenhouse gas emission estimations as well as mitigation measures to reduce severe fire events in the future. PMID:27486664

The target of this work was to assess the impact of projected climate change on the number of large forestfires (over 10 ha fires) and burned area in Finland. For this purpose, we utilized a strong relationship between fire occurrence and the Canadian fire weather index (FWI) during 1996-2014. We used daily data from five global climate models under representative concentration pathway RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The model data were statistically downscaled onto a high-resolution grid using the quantile-mapping method before performing the analysis. Our results suggest that the number of large forestfires may double or even triple during the present century. This would increase the risk that some of the fires could develop into real conflagrations which have become almost extinct in Finland due to active and efficient fire suppression. Our results also reveal substantial inter-model variability in the rate of the projected increase in forest-fire danger. We moreover showed that the majority of large fires occur within a relatively short period in May and June due to human activities and that FWI correlates poorer with the fire activity during this time of year than later in summer when lightning is more important cause of fires.

Climate warming is projected to increase the frequency and severity of wildfires in boreal forests, and increased wildfire activity may alter the large soil carbon (C) stocks in boreal forests. Changes in boreal soil C stocks that result from increased wildfire activity will be regulated in part by the response of microbial decomposition to fire, but post-fire changes in microbial decomposition are poorly understood. Here, we investigate the response of microbial decomposition to a boreal forestfire in interior Alaska and test the mechanisms that control post-fire changes in microbial decomposition. We used a reciprocal transplant between a recently burned boreal forest stand and a late successional boreal forest stand to test how post-fire changes in abiotic conditions, soil organic matter (SOM) composition, and soil microbial communities influence microbial decomposition. We found that SOM decomposing at the burned site lost 30.9% less mass over two years than SOM decomposing at the unburned site, indicating that post-fire changes in abiotic conditions suppress microbial decomposition. Our results suggest that moisture availability is one abiotic factor that constrains microbial decomposition in recently burned forests. In addition, we observed that burned SOM decomposed more slowly than unburned SOM, but the exact nature of SOM changes in the recently burned stand are unclear. Finally, we found no evidence that post-fire changes in soil microbial community composition significantly affect decomposition. Taken together, our study has demonstrated that boreal forestfires can suppress microbial decomposition due to post-fire changes in abiotic factors and the composition of SOM. Models that predict the consequences of increased wildfires for C storage in boreal forests may increase their predictive power by incorporating the observed negative response of microbial decomposition to boreal wildfires.

Forest ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada are greatly influenced by wildfire disturbance. A study of vegetation regrowth following fire is essential for us to better understand and evaluate the effects of disturbances on ecological processes, such as carbon and nitrogen storage, soil erosion, water quality and forest dynamics. The rate of short-term vegetation recovery, as measured by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), was explored following fire over multiple years (1999-2006) in Sierra Nevadan forests. The role of both temporal (e.g. variations in multiple years' precipitation) and landscape factors (e.g. altitude, slope, aspect, pre-fire and immediate post-fire vegetation status, and burn severity) were investigated in explaining the short-term vegetation regrowth following fire using remote sensing on the landscape scale. Our results indicate that spatial-temporal variability existed in the short-term post-fire vegetation regrowth. Pre-fire vegetation status, burn severity, immediate post-fire wet season precipitation and elevation were found to play important roles in short-term post-fire vegetation recovery trends. Consistent with a local forest gap model, our results also corroborate that water availability may be the limiting factor for the post-fire vegetation regrowth in the lower elevation of Sierra Nevadan forests. In the future, post-disturbance vegetation regrowth trends and related controlling environmental factors following various forest disturbances (e.g. insect outbreak and forest harvest) other than wildfire can also be studied and compared using the methodology proposed in this study.

Forestfires belong to the most frightening natural hazards, and have long-term ecological and economic effects on the regions involved. It was found that their frequency-area distributions show power-law behaviour under a wide variety of conditions, interpreting them as a self-organised critical phenomenon. Using computer simulations, self-organised critical behaviour manifests in simple cellular automaton models. With respect to ignition source, forestfires can be categorised as lightning-induced or as a result of human activity. Lightning fires are considered to be natural, whereas ``man made'' fires are frequently caused by some sort of technological disaster, such as sparks from wheels of trains, the rupture of overhead electrical lines, the misuse of electrical or mechanical devices and so on. Taking into account that such events rarely occur deep in the woods, man made fires should start preferably on the edge of a forest or where the forest is not very dense. We present a modification in the self-organised critical Drossel-Schwabl forestfire model that takes these two different triggering mechanisms into account and increases the scaling exponent of the frequency-area distribution by ca. 1/3. Combined simulations further predict a dependence of the overall event-size distribution on the ratio of lightning-induced and man made fires as well as a splitting of their partial distributions. Lightning is identified as the dominant mechanism in the regime of the largest fires. The results are confirmed by the analysis of the Canadian Large Fire Database and suggest that lightning-induced and man made forestfires cannot be treated separately in wildfire modelling, hazard assessment and forest management.

Changing climate conditions (warmer temperatures, changes in modes and timing of precipitation) are thought to be driving factors in increasing burned acreage and fire intensity in both forested and non-forested lands in Idaho and elsewhere in the interior western US. Cities in the west may be vulnerable to fire impacts to urban development , watersheds, and recreation. The wildland-urban interface (WUI) between the Boise, Idaho and the range front to its north is an example of this vulnerability. Because of long-standing practices and policies of wildfire suppression, the natural fire frequency (i.e., pre-suppression) of the forested component of the WUI is not well known or understood. In this study, we sampled fire-scarred ponderosa pine at two dry sites in separate drainages above Boise to identify both the timing and synchroneity of fire events. Partial cross-sections were collected from standing live trees using a chainsaw, and then cross-dated with an established local tree-ring chronology. The two sites have ten fire events, ranging from 1709 to 1889, with shared events only in 1771 and 1829. The fire events at the two sites all are consistent with regional fire-years in a published fire history for Idaho and Montana (Heyerdahl, et al., 2008), with one exception in 1883. This suggests that the local forest is largely responding to broader regional climate drivers. During the period of fire-scar record, fire frequency at these two sites near the Boise WUI ranged from 15-50 years; this is a much higher fire frequency than that observed since fire suppression policies were enacted, with no fire scar recorded events since 1889.

Forestfires are a common natural disturbance in forested ecosystems and have a large impact on the microbial communities in forest soils. The response of soil fungal communities to forestfire is poorly documented. Here, we investigated fungal community structure and function across a 152-year boreal forestfire chronosequence using high-throughput sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region and a functional gene array (GeoChip). Our results demonstrate that the boreal forest soil fungal community was most diverse soon after a fire disturbance and declined over time. The differences in the fungal communities were explained by changes in the abundance of basidiomycetes and ascomycetes. Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi contributed to the increase in basidiomycete abundance over time, with the operational taxonomic units (OTUs) representing the genera Cortinarius and Piloderma dominating in abundance. Hierarchical cluster analysis by using gene signal intensity revealed that the sites with different fire histories formed separate clusters, suggesting differences in the potential to maintain essential biogeochemical soil processes. The site with the greatest biological diversity had also the most diverse genes. The genes involved in organic matter degradation in the mature forest, in which ECM fungi were the most abundant, were as common in the youngest site, in which saprotrophic fungi had a relatively higher abundance. This study provides insight into the impact of fire disturbance on soil fungal community dynamics. PMID:26341215

Forestfires are a common natural disturbance in forested ecosystems and have a large impact on the microbial communities in forest soils. The response of soil fungal communities to forestfire is poorly documented. Here, we investigated fungal community structure and function across a 152-year boreal forestfire chronosequence using high-throughput sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region and a functional gene array (GeoChip). Our results demonstrate that the boreal forest soil fungal community was most diverse soon after a fire disturbance and declined over time. The differences in the fungal communities were explained by changes in the abundance of basidiomycetes and ascomycetes. Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi contributed to the increase in basidiomycete abundance over time, with the operational taxonomic units (OTUs) representing the genera Cortinarius and Piloderma dominating in abundance. Hierarchical cluster analysis by using gene signal intensity revealed that the sites with different fire histories formed separate clusters, suggesting differences in the potential to maintain essential biogeochemical soil processes. The site with the greatest biological diversity had also the most diverse genes. The genes involved in organic matter degradation in the mature forest, in which ECM fungi were the most abundant, were as common in the youngest site, in which saprotrophic fungi had a relatively higher abundance. This study provides insight into the impact of fire disturbance on soil fungal community dynamics. PMID:26341215

The use of remote sensing to discriminate, measure, and map forest damage is evaluated. TM spectal coverage, a helicopter-mounted radiometer, and ground-based surveys were utilized to examine the responses of the spruces and firs of Camels Hump Mountain, Vermont to stresses, such as pollution and trace metals. The basic spectral properties of vegetation are described. Forest damage at the site was estimated as 11.8-76.0 percent for the spruces and 19-43.8 percent for the balsam firs. Shifts in the spectra of the conifers in particular in the near IR region are analyzed, and variations in the mesophyll cell anatomy and pigment content of the spruces and firs are investigated. The relations between canopy moisture and damage is studied. The TM data are compared to aircraft data and found to be well correlated.

Military tanks, cargo or troop carriers, missile carriers or rocket launchers often hide themselves from detection in the forests. This plagues the detection problem of locating these hidden targets. An electro-optic camera mounted on a surveillance aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicle is used to capture the images of the forests with possible hidden targets, e.g., rocket launchers. We consider random forests of longitudinal and latitudinal correlations. Specifically, foliage coverage is encoded with a binary representation (i.e., foliage or no foliage), and is correlated in adjacent regions. We address the detection problem of camouflaged targets hidden in random forests by building memory into the observations. In particular, we propose an efficient algorithm to generate random forests, ground, and camouflage of hidden targets with two dimensional correlations. The observations are a sequence of snapshots consisting of foliage-obscured ground or target. Theoretically, detection is possible because there are subtle differences in the correlations of the ground and camouflage of the rocket launcher. However, these differences are well beyond human perception. To detect the presence of hidden targets automatically, we develop a Markov representation for these sequences and modify the classical filtering equations to allow the Markov chain observation. Particle filters are used to estimate the position of the targets in combination with a novel random weighting technique. Furthermore, we give positive proof-of-concept simulations.

Computational modeling of the formation of a convective column by forestfires has been carried out. It has been established that in the case of an unstable atmosphere stratification the basic factor influencing the thermal column formation is the intensification of the processes of turbulent mixing and that at a stable atmosphere stratification a more significant factor determining the convective column formation is the action of the buoyancy force. It has been shown that a swirling flow in the convective column is formed due to the appearance of a tangential velocity component as a consequence of the local circulation arising against the background of large-scale motion owing to the thermal and orographic inhomogeneities of the underlying surface.

Because American national forests are managed for all citizens, it is important that researchers explore the differences and similarities between citizens living both near and far from publicly managed land. We surveyed residents living at various distances from nationally managed land to collect resident perceptions of different forestfire-management techniques, to determine public preferences for these techniques, and to examine the motivations behind these preferences. Participants both close to and far away from national forests tended to favor a multipronged approach to fire management by preferring the use of a combination of two or more fire-management techniques. There were no significant differences by proximity in participants’ self-rated emotions, types of fire-management techniques preferred, or the reasons and rationales for their preferred fire-management technique(s), indicating that the proximity variable may not be as significant as previously thought.

After severe wildfires, pine recovery depends on ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungal spores surviving and serving as partners for regenerating forest trees. We took advantage of a large, severe natural forestfire that burned our long-term study plots to test the response of ECM fungi to fire. We sampled the ECM spore bank using pine seedling bioassays and high-throughput sequencing before and after the California Rim Fire. We found that ECM spore bank fungi survived the fire and dominated the colonization of in situ and bioassay seedlings, but there were specific fire adapted fungi such as Rhizopogon olivaceotinctus that increased in abundance after the fire. The frequency of ECM fungal species colonizing pre-fire bioassay seedlings, post-fire bioassay seedlings and in situ seedlings were strongly positively correlated. However, fire reduced the ECM spore bank richness by eliminating some of the rare species, and the density of the spore bank was reduced as evidenced by a larger number of soil samples that yielded uncolonized seedlings. Our results show that although there is a reduction in ECM inoculum, the ECM spore bank community largely remains intact, even after a high-intensity fire. We used advanced techniques for data quality control with Illumina and found consistent results among varying methods. Furthermore, simple greenhouse bioassays can be used to determine which fungi will colonize after fires. Similar to plant seed banks, a specific suite of ruderal, spore bank fungi take advantage of open niche space after fires. PMID:26473720

Wildfires may cause significant changes in soil physical and chemical properties. In addition, soil organic matter (SOM) content and chemical properties are usually affected by fire. Fire impacts may negatively affect soil health and quality, and induce or enhance runoff generation and, thereby, soil erosion risk and cause damages to the habitat of species. This fact is especially dramatic in Mediterranean ecosystems, where forestfires are a frequent phenomenon and restoration strategies are a key issue. The goals of this study are to determine: i) the immediate effects of fire on soil properties, including changes occurred in the quantity and quality of SOM and ii) the effect of post-fire actions on soil properties. In August 2012, a wildfire affected a forest area of approx. 90 ha in Montellano (Seville, SW Spain; longitude 37.00 °, latitude -5.56 °). This area is dominated by pines (Pinus pinaster and Pinus halepensis), and eucalypts (Eucaliptus globulus) with a Mediterranean climate. Dominant soil types are Rendzic Leptosols and Calcaric Haplic Regosols. It is a poorly limestone-developed soil (usually swallower than 25 cm). Four soil subsamples were collected 1 month and 25 months after fire within an area of approximately 200 m2. Subsamples were mixed together, homogenized, air-dried, crushed and sieved (2 mm). One control sample was collected in an adjacent area. The litter layer was removed by hand and studied separately. Branches, stems, bushes and plant residues on the fire-affected area were removed 16 months after the fire using heavy machinery as part of the post-fire management. The present research focuses on the study of the elemental composition (C, H and N) and physical properties (pH, water holding capacity, electrical conductivity) of bulk soil samples, and on the spectroscopic analysis (FT-IR, 13C NMR) and analytical pyrolysis data obtained from bulk the oils and from the humic acid fraction. immediate effects of fire, including the charring

Development of video, computing technologies and computer vision gives a possibility of automatic firedetection on video information. Under that project different algorithms was implemented to find more efficient way of firedetection. In that article colour based firedetection algorithm is described. But it is not enough to use only colour information to detectfire properly. The main reason of this is that in the shooting conditions may be a lot of things having colour similar to fire. A temporary intensity variation of pixels is used to separate them from the fire. These variations are averaged over the series of several frames. This algorithm shows robust work and was realised as a computer program by using of the OpenCV library.

Various visible and infrared cameras have been tested for the early detection of wildfires to protect archeological treasures. This analysis was possible thanks to the EU Firesense project (FP7-244088). Although visible cameras are low cost and give good results during daytime for smoke detection, they fall short under bad visibility conditions. In order to improve the firedetection probability and reduce the false alarms, several infrared bands are tested ranging from the NIR to the LWIR. The SWIR and the LWIR band are helpful to locate the fire through smoke if there is a direct Line Of Sight. The Emphasis is also put on the physical and the electro-optical system modeling for forestfiredetection at short and longer ranges. The fusion in three bands (Visible, SWIR, LWIR) is discussed at the pixel level for image enhancement and for firedetection.

Recent studies have shown that fire occurrence (from both human and lightning causes) is expected to increase across the boreal forest in Canada (and in many other regions of the world) with the fire weather expected to accompany climatic change in the 21st Century. Knowing total number of fires on the landscape is important for fire managers as part of their determination of load on the suppression organization's resources; however in terms of impact on the landscape (e.g., area burned or loss of values) it is that very small number of fires that escape initial attack that have the greatest impact. In this study, which covers the forest area of Canada, models of the probability of a fire escaping initial attack are developed based on the outputs of the Canadian FWI System, general fire cause and fire load. Using these models with outputs from recent General Circulation Model scenarios from the Hadley and Canadian Climate Centre were used and indicated an overall increase in expected fire escapes across the forested region of Canada. These increases are spatially quite variable however, due to the interaction between increased temperature and increased precipitation. Results between these two GCM scenarios do show some variation in parts of the country however, leading to some uncertainty in the absolute level of predicted change. The basic assumption of this analysis is that Canadian fire management agency efforts, in terms of response time and suppression resource levels, remain constant over time.

Western US ponderosa pine forests have recently suffered extensive stand-replacing fires followed by hillslope erosion and sedimentation. These fires are usually attributed to increased stand density as a result of fire suppression, grazing and other land use, and are often considered uncharacteristic or unprecedented. Tree-ring records from the past 500 years indicate that before Euro-American settlement, frequent, low-severity fires maintained open stands. However, the pre-settlement period between about ad 1500 and ad 1900 was also generally colder than present, raising the possibility that rapid twentieth-century warming promoted recent catastrophic fires. Here we date fire-related sediment deposits in alluvial fans in central Idaho to reconstruct Holocene fire history in xeric ponderosa pine forests and examine links to climate. We find that colder periods experienced frequent low-severity fires, probably fuelled by increased understory growth. Warmer periods experienced severe droughts, stand-replacing fires and large debris-flow events that comprise a large component of long-term erosion and coincide with similar events in sub-alpine forests of Yellowstone National Park. Our results suggest that given the powerful influence of climate, restoration of processes typical of pre-settlement times may be difficult in a warmer future that promotes severe fires. PMID:15525985

Forestfire has been identified as one of the key environmental issue for long-term conservation of biodiversity and has impact on global climate. Spatially multiple observations are necessary for monitoring of forestfires in tropics for understanding conservation efficacy and sustaining biodiversity in protected areas. The present work was carried out to estimate the spatial extent of forest burnt areas and fire frequency using Resourcesat Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS) data (2009, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014) in Andhra Pradesh, India. The spatio-temporal analysis shows that an area of 7514.10 km(2) (29.22% of total forest cover) has been affected by forestfires. Six major forest types are distributed in Andhra Pradesh, i.e. semi-evergreen, moist deciduous, dry deciduous, dry evergreen, thorn and mangroves. Of the total forest burnt area, dry deciduous forests account for >75%. District-wise analysis shows that Kurnool, Prakasam and Cuddapah have shown >100 km(2) of burnt area every year. The total forest burnt area estimate covering protected areas ranges between 6.9 and 22.3% during the study period. Spatial burnt area analysis for protected areas in 2014 indicates 37.2% of fire incidences in the Nagarjunasagar Srisailam Tiger Reserve followed by 20.2 % in the Sri Lankamalleswara Wildlife Sanctuary, 20.1% in the Sri Venkateswara Wildlife Sanctuary and 17.4% in the Gundla Brahmeswaram Wildlife Sanctuary. The analysis of cumulative fire occurrences from 2009 to 2014 has helped in delineation of conservation priority hotspots using a spatial grid cell approach. Conservation priority hotspots I and II are distributed in major parts of study area including protected areas of the Nagarjunasagar Srisailam Tiger Reserve and Gundla Brahmeswaram Wildlife Sanctuary. The spatial database generated will be useful in studies related to influence of fires on species adaptability, ecological damage assessment and conservation planning. PMID:26350795

Land cover change and forestfire interaction under climate and socio-economics changes, is one of the main issues of the 21th century. The capability of defining future scenarios of land cover and fire regime allow forest managers to better understand the best actions to be carried out and their long term effects. In this paper a new methodology for land cover change simulations under climate change and fire disturbance is presented and discussed. The methodology is based on the assumption that forestfires exhibits power law frequency-area distribution. The well known ForestFire Model (FFM), which is an example of self organized criticality, is able to reproduce this behavior. Starting from this observation, a modified version of the FFM has been developed. The new model, called Modified ForestFire Model (MFFM) introduces several new features. A stochastic model for vegetation growth and regrowth after fire occurrence has been implemented for different kind of vegetations. In addition, a stochastic fire propagation model taking into account topography and vegetation cover has been introduced. The MFFM has been developed with the purpose of estimating vegetation cover changes and fire regimes over a time windows of many years for a given spatial region. Two different case studies have been carried out. The first case study is related with Liguria (Italy), a region of 5400 km2 lying between the Cote d'Azur, France, and Tuscany, Italy, on the northwest coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. This region is characterized by Mediterranean fire regime. The second case study has been carried out in California (Florida) on a region having similar area and characterized by similar climate conditions. In both cases the model well represents the actual fire regime in terms of power law parameters proving interesting results about future land cover scenarios under climate, land use and socio-economics change.

Forestfire is a common natural hazard that takes lives of people and billion dollar loss of properties almost every year. In the recent past frequency of forestfires have increased in Canada and throughout the world that is associated with the changes in land use and land cover practice. Multi sensor satellites are now capable in providing information about the land cover, atmosphere and meteorological parameters. The present paper deals with the multi sensor data (AIRS, MODIS, OMI AURA, TOMS) to study the changes in greenhouse and other gases (NOx, O3, CO, water vapor) and aerosol parameters. The detailed analysis of multi sensor data have shown elevated amount of greenhouse gases, total ozone column and aerosol optical depth during summer of 2004 at the time of Canadian forestfire compared to other years. The spatial distribution of greenhouse gas, aerosol optical depth and meteorological conditions are found to change after the onset of forestfire that shows the dynamic nature of the greenhouse gas and associated releases with the dispersion of the plume and smoke from the forestfire. The maximum changes are found from the surface up to a pressure level height 500 hPa, the change occur is found to be very much dependent on the distance from the source (forestfire location) and also on the meteorological conditions.

Lake Mead provides the source of drinking water for over 25 million people in the western United States. Different forestfire events at the northern part of the lake may intensify the concentration of total suspended sediments (TSSs) in water bodies due to the abrupt changes of land covers with accelerated soil erosion. Therefore, it is important to assess the linkage between forestfire events and TSS concentration within the lake. For this purpose, the integrated data fusion and mining (IDFM) techniques were applied in this study to generate TSS concentration maps on a daily basis with the aid of remote sensing imageries. The results of this study confirm the reliability of the IDFM method for nowcasting of TSS concentrations within the lake based on these daily TSS concentration maps. It leads to the investigation of the probable impact of forestfire events on increasing TSS concentrations. Comparing these maps with time of forestfire occurrence showed the potential linkage between increasing TSS concentrations and forestfire events. However, the negative impacts of forestfire events on soil erosion may have lag time to show up.

Understanding to what extent different land uses influence fire occurrence in the Amazonian forest is particularly relevant for its conservation. We evaluate the relationship between forestfires and different anthropogenic activities linked to a variety of land uses in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia. We combine the new high-resolution (30 m) TerraClass land use database with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer burned area data for 2008 and the extreme dry year of 2010. Excluding the non-forest class, most of the burned area was found in pastures, primary and secondary forests, and agricultural lands across all three states, while only around 1% of the total was located in deforested areas. The trend in burned area did not follow the declining deforestation rates from 2001 to 2010, and the spatial overlap between deforested and burned areas was only 8% on average. This supports the claim of deforestation being disconnected from burning since 2005. Forest degradation showed an even lower correlation with burned area. We found that fires used in managing pastoral and agricultural lands that escape into the neighboring forests largely contribute to forestfires. Such escaping fires are responsible for up to 52% of the burned forest edges adjacent to burned pastures and up to 22% of the burned forest edges adjacent to burned agricultural fields, respectively. Our findings call for the development of control and monitoring plans to prevent fires from escaping from managed lands into forests to support effective land use and ecosystem management.

Thinning and prescribed fire are common management tools used to eliminate thick fuel loads that could otherwise facilitate and encourage a more severe catastrophic wildfire. The objective of this study was to quantify the lasting effects of prescribed fire on forest floor and soil nutrients approxi...

Two rural Louisiana communities were selected to evaluate the effectiveness of certain types of communication in preventing man-caused forestfires. The communities were selected on the basis of differences in fire occurrence rates and other factors related to conservation. Questionnaires and personal interviews were utilized to determine views of…

The role of digital classifications suitable as fuel maps was examined. A Taylor enhancement was produced for an 8 million hectare fire control region showing water, muskeg, coniferous, deciduous and mixed stands, clearcut logging, burned areas, regeneration areas, nonforested areas and large forest roads. Use of the map by fire control personnel demonstrated its usefulness for initial attack decision making.

Fire in tropical forests is a severe and growing problem that is exacerbated by forest fragmentation and selective logging. Despite the importance of uncontrolled forestfires in the tropics, there is currently little understanding of the processes by which disturbances alter the moisture dynamics of these normally near-fire-immune ecosystems. In this project we show that horizontal temperature gradients due to forest fragmentation generate organized mesoscale convective circulations. These circulations are anchored within the gaps and pump moisture away from the forest edges, effectively acting in opposition to the moisture-trapping evapotranspiration process. We conducted a set of 12-hour simulations and a 2-month-long simulation with the RAMS model to study the impact of these convective cells on the temperature and humidity of canopy air. These simulations show that during the 2004 dry season (June-July) the convective cells lead to a rapid drying of the forest edges to the point of fire susceptibility. This difference between intact and disturbed forests must be accounted for while predicting fire susceptibility in the tropics.

For over 50 years, the primary goal of Smokey Bear has been to introduce the forestfire prevention message to young children. This learning kit provides the K-3 teacher with activities and resources to help students learn about Smokey Bear and fire safety, about forests as habitats, and about what they can do to protect forests. Students are…

Fire regimes are strongly related to weather conditions that directly and indirectly influence fire ignition and propagation. Identifying the most important meteorological fire drivers is thus fundamental for daily fire risk forecasting. In this context, several fire weather indices have been developed focussing mainly on fire-related local weather conditions and fuel characteristics. The specificity of the conditions for which fire danger indices are developed makes its direct transfer and applicability problematic in different areas or with other fuel types. In this paper we used the low-to-intermediate fire-prone region of Canton Ticino as a case study to develop a new daily fire danger index by implementing a niche modelling approach (Maxent). In order to identify the most suitable weather conditions for fires, different combinations of input variables were tested (meteorological variables, existing fire danger indices or a combination of both). Our findings demonstrate that such combinations of input variables increase the predictive power of the resulting index and surprisingly even using meteorological variables only allows similar or better performances than using the complex Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI). Furthermore, the niche modelling approach based on Maxent resulted in slightly improved model performance and in a reduced number of selected variables with respect to the classical logistic approach. Factors influencing final model robustness were the number of fire events considered and the specificity of the meteorological conditions leading to fire ignition. PMID:25679957

The capacity of prescribed fire to restore forest conditions is often judged by changes in forest structure within a few years following burning. However, prescribed fire might have longer-term effects on forest structure, potentially changing treatment assessments. We examined annual changes in forest structure in five 1 ha old-growth plots immediately before prescribed fire and up to eight years after fire at Sequoia National Park, California. Fire-induced declines in stem density (67% average decrease at eight years post-fire) were nonlinear, taking up to eight years to reach a presumed asymptote. Declines in live stem biomass were also nonlinear, but smaller in magnitude (32% average decrease at eight years post-fire) as most large trees survived the fires. The preferential survival of large trees following fire resulted in significant shifts in stem diameter distributions. Mortality rates remained significantly above background rates up to six years after the fires. Prescribed fire did not have a large influence on the representation of dominant species. Fire-caused mortality appeared to be spatially random, and therefore did not generally alter heterogeneous tree spatial patterns. Our results suggest that prescribed fire can bring about substantial changes to forest structure in old-growth mixed conifer forests in the Sierra Nevada, but that long-term observations are needed to fully describe some measures of fire effects.

We evaluated the sensitivity of the full polarimetric Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR), onboard the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), to forest degradation caused by fires in northern Amazon, Brazil. We searched for changes in PALSAR signal and tri-dimensional polarimetric responses for different classes of fire disturbance defined by fire frequency and severity. Since the aboveground biomass (AGB) is affected by fire, multiple regression models to estimate AGB were obtained for the whole set of coherent and incoherent attributes (general model) and for each set separately (specific models). The results showed that the polarimetric L-band PALSAR attributes were sensitive to variations in canopy structure and AGB caused by forestfire. However, except for the unburned and thrice burned classes, no single PALSAR attribute was able to discriminate between the intermediate classes of forest degradation by fire. Both the coherent and incoherent polarimetric attributes were important to explain AGB variations in tropical forests affected by fire. The HV backscattering coefficient, anisotropy, double-bounce component, orientation angle, volume index and HH-VV phase difference were PALSAR attributes selected from multiple regression analysis to estimate AGB. The general regression model, combining phase and power radar metrics, presented better results than specific models using coherent or incoherent attributes. The polarimetric responses indicated the dominance of VV-oriented backscattering in primary forest and lightly burned forests. The HH-oriented backscattering predominated in heavily and frequently burned forests. The results suggested a greater contribution of horizontally arranged constituents such as fallen trunks or branches in areas severely affected by fire.

Fires influence the carbon budget of tropical forests directly because they account for a significant component of net emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. They also have indirect effects on nearby intact forests by modifying regional climate, atmospheric composition, and patterns of nutrient deposition. These latter pathways are not well understood and are often ignored in climate mitigation efforts such as the United Nations Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). Here we used the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM5) and the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED3) to quantify the impacts of fire-emitted aerosols on the productivity of tropical forests. Across the tropical forest biome, fire-emitted aerosols reduced surface temperatures and increased the diffuse solar insolation fraction. These changes in surface meteorology increased gross primary production (GPP) in the Community Land Model. However, these drivers were more than offset in many regions by reductions in soil moisture and total solar radiation. The net effect of fire aerosols caused GPP to decrease by approximately 8% in equatorial Asia and 6% in the central Africa. In the Amazon, decreases in photosynthesis in the western part of the basin were nearly balanced by increases in the south and east. Using additional CAM5 and GEOS-Chem model simulations, we estimated fire contributions to surface concentrations of ozone. Using empirical relationships between ozone exposure and GPP from field studies and models, we estimated how tropical forest GPP was further modified by fire-induced ozone. Our results suggest that efforts to reduce the fire component of tropical land use fluxes may have sustainability benefits that extend beyond the balance sheet for greenhouse gases.

The amount, frequency, and duration of precipitation have important impact on the occurrence and severity of forestfires. To fully understand the effects of precipitation regimes on forestfires, a drought index was developed with number of consecutive dry days (daily precipitation less than 2 mm) and total precipitation, and the relationships of drought and precipitation with fire activities were investigated over two periods (i.e., 1982–1988 and 1989–2008) in five ecoregions of Yunnan Province. The results showed that precipitation regime had a significant relationship with fire activities during the two periods. However, the influence of the drought on fire activities varied by ecoregions, with more impacts in drier ecoregions IV-V and less impacts in the more humid ecoregions I–III. The drought was more closely related to fire activities than precipitation during the two study periods, especially in the drier ecoregions, indicating that the frequency and the duration of precipitation had significant influences on forestfires in the drier areas. Drought appears to offer a better explanation than total precipitation on temporal changes in fire regimes across the five ecoregions in Yunnan. Our findings have significant implications for forecasting the local fire dangers under the future climate change. PMID:25243208

Fire in high-elevation forest ecosystems can have severe impacts on forest structure, function and biodiversity. Using a 105-year data set, we found increasing elevation extent of fires in the Sierra Nevada, and pose five hypotheses to explain this pattern. Beyond the recognized pattern of increasing fire frequency in the Sierra Nevada since the late 20th century, we find that the upper elevation extent of those fires has also been increasing. Factors such as fire season climate and fuel build up are recognized potential drivers of changes in fire regimes. Patterns of warming climate and increasing stand density are consistent with both the direction and magnitude of increasing elevation of wildfire. Reduction in high elevation wildfire suppression and increasing ignition frequencies may also contribute to the observed pattern. Historical biases in fire reporting are recognized, but not likely to explain the observed patterns. The four plausible mechanistic hypotheses (changes in fire management, climate, fuels, ignitions) are not mutually exclusive, and likely have synergistic interactions that may explain the observed changes. Irrespective of mechanism, the observed pattern of increasing occurrence of fire in these subalpine forests may have significant impacts on their resilience to changing climatic conditions.

Land cover is affected by many factors including economic development, climate and natural disturbances such as wildfires. The ability to evaluate how fire regimes may alter future vegetation, and how future vegetation may alter fire regimes, would assist forest managers in planning management actions to be carried out in the face of anticipated socio-economic and climatic change. In this paper, we present a method for calibrating a cellular automata wildfire regime simulation model with actual data on land cover and wildfire size-frequency. The method is based on the observation that many forestfire regimes, in different forest types and regions, exhibit power law frequency-area distributions. The standard Drossel-Schwabl cellular automata ForestFire Model (DS-FFM) produces simulations which reproduce this observed pattern. However, the standard model is simplistic in that it considers land cover to be binary - each cell either contains a tree or it is empty - and the model overestimates the frequency of large fires relative to actual landscapes. Our new model, the Modified ForestFire Model (MFFM), addresses this limitation by incorporating information on actual land use and differentiating among various types of flammable vegetation. The MFFM simulation model was tested on forest types with Mediterranean and sub-tropical fire regimes. The results showed that the MFFM was able to reproduce structural fire regime parameters for these two regions. Further, the model was used to forecast future land cover. Future research will extend this model to refine the forecasts of future land cover and fire regime scenarios under climate, land use and socio-economic change.

Knowledge of forest fuels and their potential fire behavior across a landscape is essential in fire management. Four customized fire behavior fuel models that differed significantly in fuels characteristics and environmental conditions were identified using hierarchical cluster analysis based on fuels data collected across a boreal forest landscape in northeastern China. Fuel model I represented the dense and heavily branched Pinus pumila shrubland which has significant fine live woody fuels. These forests occur mainly at higher mountain elevations. Fuel model II is applicable to forests dominated by Betula platyphylla and Populus davidiana occurring in native forests on hill slopes or at low mountain elevations. This fuel model was differentiated from other fuel models by higher herbaceous cover and lower fine live woody loading. The primary coniferous forests dominated by Larix gmelini and Pinus sylvestris L. var. mongolica were classified as fuel model III and fuel model IV. Those fuel models differed from one another in average cover and height of understory shrub and herbaceous layers as well as in aspect. The potential fire behavior for each fuel model was simulated with the BehavePlus5.0 fire behavior prediction system. The simulation results indicated that the Pinus pumila shrubland fuels had the most severe fire behavior for the 97th percentile weather condition, and had the least severe fire behavior under 90th percentile weather condition. Fuel model II presented the least severe fire potential across weather conditions. Fuel model IV resulted in greater fire severity than Fuel model III across the two weather scenarios that were examined. PMID:21691875

Lightning fires are a common natural disturbance in North America, and account for the largest proportion of the area burned by wildfires each year. Yet, the spatiotemporal patterns of lightning fires in the conterminous US are not well understood due to limitations of existing fire databases. Our goal here was to develop and test an algorithm that combined MODIS firedetections with lightning detections from the National Lightning Detection Network to identify lightning fires across the conterminous US from 2000 to 2008. The algorithm searches for spatiotemporal conjunctions of MODIS fire clusters and NLDN detected lightning strikes, given a spatiotemporal lag between lightning strike and fire ignition. The algorithm revealed distinctive spatial patterns of lightning fires in the conterminous US While a sensitivity analysis revealed that the algorithm is highly sensitive to the two thresholds that are used to determine conjunction, the density of fires it detected was moderately correlated with ground based fire records. When only fires larger than 0.4 km2 were considered, correlations were higher and the root-mean-square error between datasets was less than five fires per 625 km2 for the entire study period. Our algorithm is thus suitable for detecting broad scale spatial patterns of lightning fire occurrence, and especially lightning fire hotspots, but has limited detection capability of smaller fires because these cannot be consistently detected by MODIS. These results may enhance our understanding of large scale patterns of lightning fire activity, and can be used to identify the broad scale factors controlling fire occurrence.

Wildfire is a major disturbance in the Arctic tundra and boreal forests, having a significant impact on soil hydrology, carbon cycling, and permafrost dynamics. This study explores the use of the microwave Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique to map and quantify ground surface subsidence caused by the Anaktuvuk River fire on the North Slope of Alaska. We detected an increase of up to 8 cm of thaw-season ground subsidence after the fire, which is due to a combination of thickened active layer and permafrost thaw subsidence. Our results illustrate the effectiveness and potential of using InSAR to quantify fire impacts on the Arctic tundra, especially in regions underlain by ice-rich permafrost. Our study also suggests that surface subsidence is a more comprehensive indicator of fire impacts on ice-rich permafrost terrain than changes in active layer thickness alone.

Wildfire is a major disturbance in the Arctic tundra and boreal forests, having a significant impact on soil hydrology, carbon cycling, and permafrost dynamics. This study explores the use of the microwave Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique to map and quantify ground surface subsidence caused by the Anaktuvuk River fire on the North Slope of Alaska. We detected an increase of up to 8 cm of thaw-season ground subsidence after the fire, which is due to a combination of thickened active layer and permafrost thaw subsidence. Our results illustrate the effectiveness and potential of using InSAR to quantify fire impacts on the Arctic tundra, especially in regions underlain by ice-rich permafrost. Our study also suggests that surface subsidence is a more comprehensive indicator of fire impacts on ice-rich permafrost terrain than changes in active layer thickness alone.

Forest disturbances represent an important component of the terrestrial carbon budget. To generate spatially-explicit estimates of disturbance and regrowth, we developed an automated system to detect and characterize forest change in the eastern United States at 30 m resolution from a 28-year Landsat Thematic Mapper time-series (1984-2011). Forest changes are labeled as 'disturbances' or 'regrowth', assigned to a severity class, and attributed to a disturbance type: either fire, insects, harvest, or 'unknown'. The system generates cloud-free summertime composite images for each year from multiple summer scenes and calculates vegetation indices from these composites. Patches of similar terrain on the landscape are identified by segmenting the Normalized Burn Ratio image. The spatial variance within each patch, which has been found to be a good indicator of diffuse disturbances such as forest insect damage, is then calculated for each index, creating an additional set of indexes. To identify vegetation change and quantify its degree, the derivative through time is calculated for each index using total variance regularization to account for noise and create a piecewise-linear trend. These indexes and their derivatives detect areas of disturbance and regrowth and are also used as inputs into a neural network that classifies the disturbance type/agent. Disturbance and disease information from the US Forest Service Aerial Detection Surveys (ADS) geodatabase and disturbed plots from the US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) database provided training data for the neural network. Although there have been recent advances in discriminating between disturbance types in boreal forests, due to the larger number of forest species and cosmopolitan nature of overstory communities in eastern forests, separation remains difficult. The ADS database, derived from sketch maps and later digitized, commonly designates a single large area encompassing many smaller effected

Historically, fire was one of the most widespread natural disturbances in the western United States. More recently, however, significant anthropogenic activities, especially fire suppression and silvicultural practices, have altered fire regimes; as a result, landscapes and associated communities have changed as well. Herein, we review current knowledge of how fire and post-fire salvaging practices affect avian communities in conifer-dominated forests of the western United States. Specifically, we contrast avian communities in (1) burned vs. unburned forest, and (2) unsalvaged vs. salvage-logged burns. We also examine how variation in burn characteristics (e.g., severity, age, size) and salvage logging can alter avian communities in burns. Of the 41 avian species observed in three or more studies comparing early post-fire and adjacent unburned forests, 22% are consistently more abundant in burned forests, 34% are usually more abundant in unburned forests, and 44% are equally abundant in burned and unburned forests or have varied responses. In general, woodpeckers and aerial foragers are more abundant in burned forest, whereas most foliage-gleaning species are more abundant in unburned forests. Bird species that are frequently observed in stand-replacement burns are less common in understory burns; similarly, species commonly observed in unburned forests often decrease in abundance with increasing burn severity. Granivores and species common in open-canopy forests exhibit less consistency among studies. For all species, responses to fire may be influenced by a number of factors including burn severity, fire size and shape, proximity to unburned forests, pre- and post-fire cover types, and time since fire. In addition, post-fire management can alter species' responses to burns. Most cavity-nesting species do not use severely salvaged burns, whereas some cavity-nesters persist in partially salvaged burns. Early post-fire specialists, in particular, appear to prefer

Larch (Larix spp.) dominant forests compose a large proportion of the forests of Russia (i.e., about 40% of forested areas). These forests range from the Yenisei ridge on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east, and from Lake Baikal on the south to the 73rd parallel in the north. Larch stands comprise the world s northern most forest at Ary-Mas (72 deg 28' N, 102 deg 15' E). Larch dominated forests occupy about 70% of the permafrost areas in Siberia. Larch forms high closure stands as well as open forests, and is found mainly over permafrost, where other tree species barely survive. Wildfires are typical for this territory with the majority occurring as ground fires due to low crown closure. Due to the thin active layer in permafrost soils and a dense lichen-moss cover, ground fires may cause stand mortality. The vast areas of larch-dominant forests is generally considered as a "carbon sink"; however, positive long-term temperature trends at higher latitudes are expected to result in an increase of fire frequency, and thus may convert this area to a source for greenhouse gases. There are recent observations regarding the increase of fire frequency within non-protected territories. Surprisingly, there are few publications on fire chronoseqences for the huge forested territory between the Ural Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Also there is a general understanding that bimodal (late spring -- early summer and late summer-beginning of fall) fire seasonal distribution in the south becomes uni-modal (late spring -- early summer) in the north. The purpose of this study is to investigate the wildfire history at the northern edge of the zone of larch dominance.

Insect disturbance is often thought to increase fire risk through enhanced fuel loadings, particularly in coniferous forest ecosystems. Yet insect disturbances also affect successional pathways and landscape structure that interact with fire disturbances (and vice-versa) over longer time scales. We applied a landscape succession and disturbance model (LANDIS-II) to evaluate the relative strength of interactions between spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) outbreaks and fire disturbances in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in northern Minnesota (USA). Disturbance interactions were evaluated for two different scenarios: presettlement forests and fire regimes vs. contemporary forests and fire regimes. Forest composition under the contemporary scenario trended toward mixtures of deciduous species (primarily Betula papyrifera and Populus spp.) and shade-tolerant conifers (Picea mariana, Abies balsamea, Thuja occidentalis), with disturbances dominated by a combination of budworm defoliation and high-severity fires. The presettlement scenario retained comparatively more “big pines” (i.e., Pinus strobus, P. resinosa) and tamarack (L. laricina), and experienced less budworm disturbance and a comparatively less-severe fire regime. Spruce budworm disturbance decreased area burned and fire severity under both scenarios when averaged across the entire 300-year simulations. Contrary to past research, area burned and fire severity during outbreak decades were each similar to that observed in non-outbreak decades. Our analyses suggest budworm disturbances within forests of the BWCA have a comparatively weak effect on long-term forest composition due to a combination of characteristics. These include strict host specificity, fine-scaled patchiness created by defoliation damage, and advance regeneration of its primary host, balsam fir (A. balsamea) that allows its host to persist despite repeated disturbances. Understanding the nature of the three-way interaction

Insect disturbance is often thought to increase fire risk through enhanced fuel loadings, particularly in coniferous forest ecosystems. Yet insect disturbances also affect successional pathways and landscape structure that interact with fire disturbances (and vice-versa) over longer time scales. We applied a landscape succession and disturbance model (LANDIS-II) to evaluate the relative strength of interactions between spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) outbreaks and fire disturbances in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in northern Minnesota (USA). Disturbance interactions were evaluated for two different scenarios: presettlement forests and fire regimes vs. contemporary forests and fire regimes. Forest composition under the contemporary scenario trended toward mixtures of deciduous species (primarily Betula papyrifera and Populus spp.) and shade-tolerant conifers (Picea mariana, Abies balsamea, Thuja occidentalis), with disturbances dominated by a combination of budworm defoliation and high-severity fires. The presettlement scenario retained comparatively more "big pines" (i.e., Pinus strobus, P. resinosa) and tamarack (L. laricina), and experienced less budworm disturbance and a comparatively less-severe fire regime. Spruce budworm disturbance decreased area burned and fire severity under both scenarios when averaged across the entire 300-year simulations. Contrary to past research, area burned and fire severity during outbreak decades were each similar to that observed in non-outbreak decades. Our analyses suggest budworm disturbances within forests of the BWCA have a comparatively weak effect on long-term forest composition due to a combination of characteristics. These include strict host specificity, fine-scaled patchiness created by defoliation damage, and advance regeneration of its primary host, balsam fir (A. balsamea) that allows its host to persist despite repeated disturbances. Understanding the nature of the three-way interaction between

In the face of on-going climatic warming and land-use change, there is growing concern that temperate forest landscapes could be near a tipping point where relatively small changes to the fire regime or altered post-fire vegetation dynamics could lead to extensive conversion to shrublands or savannas. To evaluate vulnerability and resilience to such conversion, we develop a simple model based on three factors we hypothesize to be key in predicting temperate forest responses to changing fire regimes: (1) the hazard rate (i.e., the probability of burning in the next year given the time since the last fire) in closed-canopy forests, (2) the hazard rate for recently-burned, open-canopy vegetation, and (3) the time to redevelop canopy closure following fire. We generate a response surface representing the proportions of the landscape potentially supporting closed-canopy forest and non-forest vegetation under nearly all combinations of these three factors. We then place real landscapes on this response surface to assess the type and magnitude of changes to the fire regime that would drive extensive forest loss. We show that the deforestation of much of New Zealand that followed initial human colonization and the introduction of a new ignition source ca. 750 years ago was essentially inevitable due to the slow rate of forest recovery after fire and the high flammability of post-fire vegetation. In North America's Pacific Northwest, by contrast, a predominantly forested landscape persisted despite two periods of widespread burning in the recent past due in large part to faster post-fireforest recovery and less pronounced differences in flammability between forests and the post-fire vegetation. We also assess the factors that could drive extensive deforestation in other regions to identify where management could reduce this potential and to guide field and modeling work to better understand the responses and ecological feedbacks to changing fire regimes.

The Russian boreal forest has experienced significant warming over the past several decades and this trend is expected to continue. This warming has the capacity to alter dominant vegetation and biomass dynamics through shifts in competition dynamics, a change in treeline and an increased fire disturbance regime. Historical fire return interval is calculated for the Russian ecoregions and applied to 31,010 points of a 22 x 22 km2 grid. Using an individual tree based forest gap model, UVAFME, biomass and species dynamics are simulated for multiple scenarios: without fire, with historical fire probabilities, a doubling of probabilities across the region, and the combined effect of fire with an altered climate. Fire disturbance within the model is a randomly occurring event with a variable intensity that alters the seedling bank and kills trees according to unique species fire tolerance parameters. Results from the simulation scenarios are compared to assess changes in biomass, species composition, and age structure 500 years after bare ground initiation. At the end of simulation, results which include fire disturbance show an increase in biomass across the region compared to simulation without fire. This increase in biomass in the simulations with fire disturbance is associated with an overall decrease in the age of the forest to younger more productive stands. The doubling of the fire return interval maintains a higher percentage of the needle leaf deciduous larch across Siberia. With altered climate, the region experiences an overall decrease in biomass and a shift in composition towards early successional deciduous species. These results reinforce the importance of the inclusion of complex competition and age structure in evaluating forest response to disturbance and changing climate.

Singapore is regularly exposed to substantial levels of transboundary air pollution arising from uncontrolled forest and peat fires from specific regions within Southeast Asia. This air pollution has detrimental impacts on the lives of Singapore residents and on sensitive ecosystems. In June 2013, forestfires resulted in concentrations of particulate matter greatly exceeding levels recommended for human health, causing substantial public concern. We apply two different methods to quantify the impact of forestfires on the concentrations of particulate matter with diameter less than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) in Singapore. Firstly, we use a global aerosol model (GLOMAP) in combination with fire emissions from GFED3 to simulate PM2.5 concentrations over the period 1998-2009. We evaluate simulated PM2.5 concentrations against long-term observations from Singapore. To identify the contributions of fires from different source regions to PM2.5 concentrations we run multiple simulations with and without fire emissions from specific regions across Southeast Asia. Secondly, we apply an atmospheric back trajectory model in combination with the GFED3 fire emissions to calculate exposure of air masses arriving in Singapore to fire emissions. Both methods use meteorology from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts and are consistent with the large-scale atmospheric flow from the assimilated observations. We find that both methods give consistent results, with forestfires increasing PM2.5 concentrations in Singapore predominately during April to October. Forest and peat fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan cause the greatest degradation of air quality in Singapore. The contribution of fires to PM2.5 concentrations in Singapore exhibits strong interannual variability. During years with a strong contribution from fires, our simulations show that the prevention of fires in southern Sumatra would reduce regional PM2.5 concentrations around Singapore by more than a factor

PREFER is a Copernicus project of the EC-FP7 program which aims developing spatial information products that may support fire prevention and burned areas restoration decisions and establish a relevant web-based regional service for making these products available to fire management stakeholders. The service focuses to the Mediterranean region, where fire risk is high and damages from wildfires are quite important, and develop its products for pilot areas located in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Greece. PREFER aims to allow fire managers to have access to online resources, which shall facilitate fire prevention measures, fire hazard and risk assessment, estimation of fire impact and damages caused by wildfire as well as support monitoring of post-fire regeneration and vegetation recovery. It makes use of a variety of products delivered by space borne sensors and develop seasonal and daily products using multi-payload, multi-scale and multi-temporal analysis of EO data. The PREFER Service portfolio consists of two main suite of products. The first refers to mapping products for supporting decisions concerning the Preparedness/Prevention Phase (ISP Service). The service delivers Fuel, Hazard and Fire risk maps for this purpose. Furthermore the PREFER portfolio includes Post-fire vegetation recovery, burn scar maps, damage severity and 3D fire damage assessment products in order to support relative assessments required in context of the Recovery/Reconstruction Phase (ISR Service) of fire management.

Wildfire is a complex landscape process with great uncertainty in whether trends in size and severity are shifting trajectories for ecosystem recovery that are outside of the historical range of variability. Considering that wildfire size and severity is likely to increase into the future with a drier climate, it is important that we understand wildfire effects and ecosystem recovery. To evaluate how ecosystems recover from wildfire we measured spatial patterns in regeneration and mapped tree refugia within mega-fire perimeters (Hayman, Jasper, Bobcat, and Grizzly Gulch) in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) dominated forest. On average, high severity fire effects accounted for > 15% of burned area and increased with fire size. Areas with high severity fire effects contained 1 - 15% tree refugia cover, compared to 37 - 70% observed in low severity areas . Large high severity patches with low coverage of tree refugia, were more frequent in larger fires and regeneration distances required to initiate forest recovery far exceeded 1.5 canopy height or 200 m, distances where the vast majority of regeneration is likely to arise. Using a recovery model driven by distance, we estimate recovery times between 300 to > 1000 years for these mega-fires. In Western dry conifer forests, large patches of stand replacing fire are likely to lead to uneven aged forest and very long recovery times.

Fires are one of the main causes of environmental alteration in Mediterranean forest ecosystems. Albedo varies and evolves seasonally based on solar illumination. It is greatly influenced by changes on vegetation: vegetation growth, cutting/planting forests or forestfires. This work analyzes albedo variations due to a large forestfire that occurred on 19- 21 September 2012 in northwestern Spain. From this area, albedo post-fire images (immediately and 1-year after fire) were generated from Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) data. Specifically we considered total shortwave albedo, total-, direct-, and diffuse-visible, and near-infrared albedo. Nine to twelve weeks after fire, 111 field plots were measured (27 unburned plots, 84 burned plots). The relationship between albedo values and thematic class (burned/unburned) was evaluated by one-way analysis of variance. Our results demonstrate that albedo changes were related to burned/unburned variable with statistical significance, indicating the importance of forestry areas as regulators of land surface energy fluxes and revealing the potential of post-fire albedo for assessing burned areas. Future research, however, is needed to evaluate the persistence of albedo changes.

Fires lead to a rapid release of carbon (C) from forest and other fire-prone ecosystems, emitting important quantities of C to the atmosphere. Every year 300-600 Mill. ha burn around the globe, generating CO2 emissions equivalent to half of the current annual global from fossil fuel combustion. Over the longer-term vegetation fires are widely considered as 'net zero Carbon (C) emission events', because C emissions from fires, excluding those associated with deforestation, are balanced by C uptake by regenerating vegetation. This 'zero C emission' scenario, however, may be flawed, as it does not consider the role of pyrogenic C (PyC). During fire, some of the fuel is transformed into PyC (i.e. charcoal, black C, soot), which is characterized by an enhanced recalcitrance and a longer mean residence time in the environment than its 'fresh' precursors. Therefore, after complete regeneration of the vegetation, the PyC generated represents an additional longer-term C pool and, hence, recurring fire-regrowth cycles could be considered as a 'net sink of atmospheric C'. To test the validity of this hypothesis, and to estimate how quantitatively important this PyC pool might be, accurate data on PyC production with respect to the fuel combusted are needed. Unfortunately, detailed quantification of fuel prior to fire is normally only available for prescribed and experimental fires, which are usually of low-intensity and therefore not representative of higher-intensity wildfires. Furthermore, what little data is available is usually based on only a specific fraction of the PyC present following burning rather than the whole range of PyC products and stores (i.e. PyC in soil, ash, downed wood and standing vegetation). The FireSmart project (Ft. Providence, NWT, Canada, June 2012) provided the ideal framework to address this research gap. This experimental fire reproduced wildfire conditions in boreal forest, i.e. stand-replacing crown fire and, at the same time, allowed i) pre-fire

South American seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) are critically endangered, with only a small proportion of their original distribution remaining. This paper presents a 12 000 year reconstruction of climate change, fire and vegetation dynamics in the Bolivian Chiquitano SDTF, based upon pollen and charcoal analysis, to examine the resilience of this ecosystem to drought and fire. Our analysis demonstrates a complex relationship between climate, fire and floristic composition over multi-millennial time scales, and reveals that moisture variability is the dominant control upon community turnover in this ecosystem. Maximum drought during the Early Holocene, consistent with regional drought reconstructions, correlates with a period of significant fire activity between 8000 and 7000 cal yr BP which resulted in a decrease in SDTF diversity. As fire activity declined but severe regional droughts persisted through the Middle Holocene, SDTFs, including Anadenanthera and Astronium, became firmly established in the Bolivian lowlands. The trend of decreasing fire activity during the last two millennia promotes the idea among forest ecologists that SDTFs are threatened by fire. Our analysis shows that the Chiquitano seasonally dry biome has been more resilient to Holocene changes in climate and fire regime than previously assumed, but raises questions over whether this resilience will continue in the future under increased temperatures and drought coupled with a higher frequency anthropogenic fire regime.This article is part of the themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'. PMID:27216522

This work addresses the impacts of development at the wildland–urban interface on forestfires that spread to human habitats. Catastrophic fires in the western United States and elsewhere make these impacts a matter of urgency for decision makers, scientists, and the general public. Using a simple fire-spread model, along with housing and vegetation data, we show that fire size probability distributions can be strongly modified by the density and flammability of houses. We highlight a sharp transition zone in the parameter space of vegetation flammability and house density. Many actual fire landscapes in the United States appear to have spreading properties close to this transition. Thus, the density and flammability of buildings should be taken into account when assessing fire risk at the wildland–urban interface. Moreover, our results highlight ways for regulation at this interface to help mitigate fire risk. PMID:17717082

This work addresses the impacts of development at the wildland-urban interface on forestfires that spread to human habitats. Catastrophic fires in the western United States and elsewhere make these impacts a matter of urgency for decision makers, scientists, and the general public. Using a simple fire-spread model, along with housing and vegetation data, we show that fire size probability distributions can be strongly modified by the density and flammability of houses. We highlight a sharp transition zone in the parameter space of vegetation flammability and house density. Many actual fire landscapes in the United States appear to have spreading properties close to this transition. Thus, the density and flammability of buildings should be taken into account when assessing fire risk at the wildland-urban interface. Moreover, our results highlight ways for regulation at this interface to help mitigate fire risk. PMID:17717082

Smoke measurements were made during grass and forest understory prescribed fires as part of a comprehensive program to understand fire and smoke behaviour. Instruments deployed on the ground, airplane and tethered aerostat platforms characterized the smoke plumes through measure...

Forest and land fire can cause negative implications for forest ecosystems, biodiversity, air quality and soil structure. However, the implications involved can be minimized through effective disaster management system. Effective disaster management mechanisms can be developed through appropriate early warning system as well as an efficient delivery system. This study tried to focus on two aspects, namely by mapping the potential of forestfire and land as well as the delivery of information to users through WebGIS application. Geospatial technology and mathematical modeling used in this study for identifying, classifying and mapping the potential area for burning. Mathematical models used is the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), while Geospatial technologies involved include remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) and digital field data collection. The entire Selangor state was chosen as our study area based on a number of cases have been reported over the last two decades. AHP modeling to assess the comparison between the three main criteria of fuel, topography and human factors design. Contributions of experts directly involved in forestfire fighting operations and land comprising officials from the Fire and Rescue Department Malaysia also evaluated in this model. The study found that about 32.83 square kilometers of the total area of Selangor state are the extreme potential for fire. Extreme potential areas identified are in Bestari Jaya and Kuala Langat High Ulu. Continuity of information and terrestrial forestfire potential was displayed in WebGIS applications on the internet. Display information through WebGIS applications is a better approach to help the decision-making process at a high level of confidence and approximate real conditions. Agencies involved in disaster management such as Jawatankuasa Pengurusan Dan Bantuan Bencana (JPBB) of District, State and the National under the National Security Division and the Fire and Rescue

Forestfires are harmful to the ecological environment, which have induced global attention. In the present paper fire activities extracted from MODIS and burned areas were compared, and it was found that the wave band of 8-9 extracted from MOD14A1 was useful for fire monitoring, and the data accorded with field investigation with goodness of fit reaching up to 0. 83. Through combining this wave band and the relative data to make the time and space analysis of the forestfires for 11 years, from 2000 to 2010, the study showed that the fire occurred most frequently in the spring, the autumn took the second place, and in the summer there was almost no fire occurrence unless drought. Through the analysis of the research area, the burned areas of the coniferous forest and temperate mixed forest were 53.68% and 44%, respectively, while the grassland was only 2.32%. Da Hinggan Ling region was the main combustion area, the burned areas were 64.7% and that for Xiao Hinggan Ling was about 23.49%, while those for other areas were less than 5%. The majority of forest land of burned areas has a gentle slope (< or =5 percent), and is in the middle altitude between 200 and 500 m. So, using satellite remote sensing to analyze the time series of burned areas in forests would make the relationship between the fire activities, climate change, topography and vegetation type clear and it is also helpful to predicting the risk level of the fire areas. PMID:24369655

from certain Eucaliptus and Pinus), or if clog soil pores (depending also on the soil type). If ash is wettable, it can store even 80% of its volume and then it will delay and reduce overland flow proportionally to the thickness of the ash layer. Once ash gets saturated, the flow tends to adjust to an infiltration rate similar to the soil itself, or sometimes higher due to the protection of ash that can reduce soil water repellency and soil sealing (Bodí et al. 2011, 2012). Still, many other aspects on ash remain unknown and ash present us more questions like, what it is its role on the carbon cycle? what is the extent of the ahs effects at basin scale? what is the fate of ash and how long it remains in the ecosystem? are there specific effects of ash depending on the ecosystem and so the type of ash? Acknowledgements This work was supported financially by a research fellowship (AP2007-04602) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (M.B. Bodí) and the projects PT2009-0073 and CGL2010-21670-C02-01. References Bodí, M.B., Mataix-Solera, J., Doerr, S.H., Cerdà, A., 2011, The wettability of ash from burned vegetation and its relationship to Mediterranean plant species type, burn severity and total organic carbon content. Geoderma 160, 599-607. Bodí, M.B., Doerr, S.H., Cerdà, A., Mataix-Solera, J., 2012, Hydrological effects of a layer of vegetation ash on underlying wettable and water repellent soil. Geoderma 191, 14-23 Cerdà, A., 1998, Changes in overland flow and infiltration after a rangeland fire in a Mediterranean scrubland. Hydrological Processes 12, 1031-1042. Cerdà, A., Doerr, S.H., 2008, The effect of ash and needle cover on surface runoff and erosion in the immediate post-fire period. Catena 74, 256-263. Woods, S.W., Balfour, V., 2008, The effect of ash on runoff and erosion after a forest wildfire, Montana, U.S.A. International Journal of Wildland Fire 17, 535-548.

Fires shape fundamental properties of many forest ecosystems and climate change will increase their relevance in regions where fires occur infrequently today. In ecosystems that are not adapted to fire, post-fire tree recruitment is often sparse, a fact that might be attributed to a transient lack of mycorrhizae. Ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungi play an important role for recruitment by enhancing nutrient and water uptake of their hosts. The questions arise whether and for how long the EcM community is transformed by fire. We investigated the resistance and resilience of EcM fungal communities on a chronosequence of 12 Pinus sylvestris stands in Valais (Switzerland) and Val d'Aosta (Italy) affected by fire between 1990 and 2006. Soil samples from burnt and non-burnt forests were analyzed with respect to EcM fungi by means of a bioassay. The number of EcM species was significantly lower in samples from recently (2-5 years) burnt sites than non-burnt forest, and increased with time since fire reaching levels of adjacent forests after 15-18 years. Community composition changed after fire but did not converge to that of non-burnt sites over the 18 year period. Only Rhizopogon roseolus and Cenococcum geophilum were abundant in both burnt sites and adjacent forest. Our data indicate fire resistance of some EcM fungal species as well as rapid resilience in terms of species number, but not in species composition. As long as the function of different EcM species for seedling establishment is unknown, the consequences of long-term shifts in EcM community composition for tree recruitment remain unclear. PMID:21468664

Understanding the drivers of the boreal forestfire activity is challenging due to the complexity of the interactions driving fire regimes. We analyzed drivers of forestfire activity in Northern Scandinavia (above 60 N) by combining modern and proxy data over the Holocene. The results suggest that the cold climate in northern Scandinavia was generally characterized by dry conditions favourable to periods of regionally increased fire activity. We propose that the cold conditions over the northern North Atlantic, associated with low SSTs, expansion of sea ice cover, and the southward shift in the position of the subpolar gyre, redirect southward the precipitation over Scandinavia, associated with the westerlies. This dynamics strengthens high pressure systems over Scandinavia and results in increased regional fire activity. Our study reveals a previously undocumented teleconnection between large scale climate and ocean dynamics over the North Atlantic and regional boreal forestfire activity in Northern Scandinavia. Consistency of the pattern observed annually through millennium scales suggests that a strong link between Atlantic SST and fire activity on multiple temporal scales over the entire Holocene is relevant for understanding future fire activity across the European boreal zone.

Understanding the drivers of the boreal forestfire activity is challenging due to the complexity of the interactions driving fire regimes. We analyzed drivers of forestfire activity in Northern Scandinavia (above 60 N) by combining modern and proxy data over the Holocene. The results suggest that the cold climate in northern Scandinavia was generally characterized by dry conditions favourable to periods of regionally increased fire activity. We propose that the cold conditions over the northern North Atlantic, associated with low SSTs, expansion of sea ice cover, and the southward shift in the position of the subpolar gyre, redirect southward the precipitation over Scandinavia, associated with the westerlies. This dynamics strengthens high pressure systems over Scandinavia and results in increased regional fire activity. Our study reveals a previously undocumented teleconnection between large scale climate and ocean dynamics over the North Atlantic and regional boreal forestfire activity in Northern Scandinavia. Consistency of the pattern observed annually through millennium scales suggests that a strong link between Atlantic SST and fire activity on multiple temporal scales over the entire Holocene is relevant for understanding future fire activity across the European boreal zone. PMID:26940995

Understanding the drivers of the boreal forestfire activity is challenging due to the complexity of the interactions driving fire regimes. We analyzed drivers of forestfire activity in Northern Scandinavia (above 60 N) by combining modern and proxy data over the Holocene. The results suggest that the cold climate in northern Scandinavia was generally characterized by dry conditions favourable to periods of regionally increased fire activity. We propose that the cold conditions over the northern North Atlantic, associated with low SSTs, expansion of sea ice cover, and the southward shift in the position of the subpolar gyre, redirect southward the precipitation over Scandinavia, associated with the westerlies. This dynamics strengthens high pressure systems over Scandinavia and results in increased regional fire activity. Our study reveals a previously undocumented teleconnection between large scale climate and ocean dynamics over the North Atlantic and regional boreal forestfire activity in Northern Scandinavia. Consistency of the pattern observed annually through millennium scales suggests that a strong link between Atlantic SST and fire activity on multiple temporal scales over the entire Holocene is relevant for understanding future fire activity across the European boreal zone. PMID:26940995

Each of the twelve Booster Main Magnet Power Supply modules consist of two three-phase, full-wave rectifier bridges in series to provide a 560 VDC maximum output. The harmonic contents of the twelve-pulse ac-dc converter output are multiples of the 60 Hz ac power input, with a predominant 720 Hz signal greater than 14 dB in magnitude above the closest harmonic components at maximum output. The 720 Hz harmonic is typically greater than 20 dB below the 500 VDC output signal under normal operation. Extracting specific harmonics from the rectifier output signal of a 6, 12, or 24 pulse ac-dc converter allows the detection of SCR firing angle errors or complete misfires. A bandpass filter provides the input signal to a frequency-to-voltage converter. Comparing the output of the frequency-to-voltage converter to a reference voltage level provides an indication of the magnitude of the harmonics in the ac-dc converter output signal.

In this paper, the authors propose a method for detectingfire smoke by using the optical flow. This method is not influenced against the image obtainment environment. About 60,000 fires have occurred every year in Japan. To be most important to the fires is an early period fire fighting. At present, the automatic devices of detectiong fires is needed. The alarms which can detect smoke and heat are utilized to house fires. However, these alarms are not useful for the outside of house such as the incendiary or woodland fire. This method is able to detect such a flame that becomes a fire is the early period. First, the region of the flame in the images obtained from the observation camera is detected. Next, the characteristic quantity that expresses the smoke is extracted. This characteristic is not influenced to the motion such as the cloud, leaf and moving objects. In other words, the only smoke can be detected, from the range which looks like the flame in the image.

More than half of the global forest carbon stock is held in tropical forests. A relatively large proportion of the tropical forest carbon is stored in plant biomass rather than in the soil, making these stocks particularly vulnerable to disturbances such as droughts, fires and cyclones. The frequencies, duration and intensities of such disturbances may change under future climates with poorly resolved but potentially significant (synergistic) effects on the carbon carrying capacity of tropical forests and thereby on global geochemical cycles. In this study we analyse high-resolution global data sets for tropical forest biomass (Saatchi et al., 2011. PNAS) and fire affected areas (GFED4, Giglio et al.,2013. JGR 118), together with climate data (WorldClim, Hijmans et al., 2005. Int. J. Clim. 25), to quantify the sensitivity of tropical forest carbon stocks in South America, Africa and Asia/Australia to seasonal water deficits and fire. Here, the climatic water deficit (D), calculated as the difference between mean annual potential evapotranspiration and actual evapotranspiration, is used as a measure of seasonal water stress (i.e., evaporative demand not met by available water), while the mean annual burned area fraction (1995-2013) of grid cells is used as a measure of average fire activity. Tropical forest carbon stocks are maximal, as expected, where water deficits are negligible. In those densely forested environments fire tends to be extremely rare as fuels are too wet to burn for most of the time. In all three continents, potential tropical forest carbon stocks are well predicted by a non-linear decreasing function of the mean annual climatic water deficit, with a steep drop in carbon stocks at D of 700-800 mm per year. At this threshold in the climatic water deficit we observe a strong increase in fire activity that is indicative of a critical change in vegetation structure (i.e., tree/grass ratio) and associated shift in the dominant climatic constraint on

A comparative analysis of the impacts of prescribed fire on three upland forest stands in the Northeastern Atlantic Plain, NJ, USA, was conducted. Effects of prescribed fire on water use and gas exchange of overstory pines were estimated via sap-flux rates and photosynthetic measurements on Pinus rigida Mill. Each study site had two sap-flux plots, one experiencing prescribed fire and one control (unburned) plot for comparison before and after the fire. We found that photosynthetic capacity in terms of Rubisco-limited carboxylation rate and intrinsic water-use efficiency was unaffected, while light compensation point and dark respiration rate were significantly lower in the burned vs control plots post-fire. Furthermore, quantum yield in pines in the pine-dominated stands was less affected than pines in the mixed oak/pine stand, as there was an increase in quantum yield in the oak/pine stand post-fire compared with the control (unburned) plot. We attribute this to an effect of forest type but not fire per se. Average daily sap-flux rates of the pine trees increased compared with control (unburned) plots in pine-dominated stands and decreased in the oak/pine stand compared with control (unburned) plots, potentially due to differences in fuel consumption and pre-fire sap-flux rates. Finally, when reference canopy stomatal conductance was analyzed, pines in the pine-dominated stands were more sensitive to changes in vapor pressure deficit (VPD), while stomatal responses of pines in the oak/pine stand were less affected by VPD. Therefore, prescribed fire affects physiological functioning and water use of pines, but the effects may be modulated by forest stand type and fuel consumption pattern, which suggests that these factors may need to be taken into account for forest management in fire-dominated systems. PMID:27259637

Changes in land use or disturbances such as defoliation by insects, disease, or fire all affect the composition and amount of tree canopy in a forest. These changes are easy to detect. Noticing and understanding the complex ways that global or regional-scale climate change combines with these disturbances to affect forest growth patterns and succession is difficult. This is particularly true for regions where changes in climate are not the most extreme, such as the mid-latitude forests of the Eastern United States. If land and water resources are to be managed responsibly, it is important to know how well the impacts of climate change on these forests can be measured in order to provide the best information possible to respond to any future changes. The goal of this study is to test whether climate-induced changes in forests in the Eastern United States can be detected and characterized using satellite imagery.

that it contains the largest proportion of ash-type forest severely burnt (38.7%). Under wetter than average conditions, change in post-fire water yield is largely explained by changes in average age of the forest. The rates of ET are largely determined by the conductance and interception of the forest canopy. Under lower than average rainfall conditions, when water becomes limiting, annual rainfall is the best predictor of post-fire change in water yield. Under conditions of low rainfall and low soil water content that are conducive to larger wildfires, any initial increase in post-fire streamflow due to reduced canopy cover may not occur or be detected because a substantial soil water deficit must first be removed before appreciable changes in streamflow will occur. This partly explains the lack of increase in initial post-fire streamflow reported after wildfire compared to an increase in streamflow following forest harvesting experiments during wetter periods.

Palaeoecological data provides valuable information for understanding the processes behind the past changes in forest composition, and hence can provide important knowledge regarding the potential effects of future changes in climate on boreal vegetation. Furthermore, it is essential to consider both regional and local factors in order to better understand the processes behind the boreal forest dynamics. The relative importance of climate, forestfires and human population size on long-term boreal forest composition were statistically investigated at regional and local scales in Fennoscandia. Statistical method variation partitioning was employed to assess the relative importance of these three variables. Fossil pollen data reflecting long-term boreal forest composition, at both regional (lake records) and local (small hollow records) scales from Russia, Finland and Sweden, were used as response matrix. Climate, generated from a climate model and oxygen isotope data, past forestfires generated from sedimentary charcoal data and human population size derived from radiocarbon dated archaeological findings were used as potential drivers of long-term boreal vegetation. Though the results clearly demonstrate that climate is the main driver of long-term vegetation changes at the regional scale, the role of climate notably is smaller at local scale and the influence of local site specific factors increases. However, the relative importance of forestfires on long-term changes in boreal forest composition remain generally low both at regional and local scale. The relatively low importance of both climate and forestfires on the variation in long-term boreal forest composition at local scale demonstrates the complexity of factors affecting stand-scale forest dynamics. In general, the relative importance of human population size on long-term changes in boreal vegetation was low. However, this was the first time that this type of human population size data was statistically

Forestfire is one of the most critical ecosystem processes in the boreal megabiome, and it is likely that its frequency, size and severity have had a primary role in vegetation dynamics since the Last Ice Age (Kasischke & Stocks 2000). Fire not only organizes the physical and biological attributes of boreal forests, but also affects biogeochemical cycling, particularly the carbon balance (Balshi et al. 2007). Due to their location at climatically sensitive northern latitudes, boreal forests are likely to be significantly affected by global warming with a consequent increase in biomass burning (Soja et al. 2007), a variation in vegetation structure and composition (Johnstone et al. 2004) and a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (Bond-Lamberty et al. 2007). Even if the ecological role of wildfire in boreal forest is widely recognized, a clearer understanding of the environmental factors controlling fire dynamics and how variations in fire regimes impact forest ecosystems is essential in order to place modern fire processes in a meaningful context for projecting ecosystem behaviour in a changing environment (Kelly et al. 2013). Because fire return intervals and successional cycles in boreal forests occur over decadal to centennial timescales (Hu et al. 2006), palaeoecological research seems to be one of the most promising tool for elucidating ecosystem changes over a broad range of environmental conditions and temporal scales. Within this context, our first aim is to reconstruct spatial and temporal patterns of boreal forestsfire dynamics during the Holocene based on sedimentary charcoal records. As a second step, trends in biomass burning will be statistically analysed in order to disentangle between regional and local drivers. The use of European and north-American sites will give us the unique possibility to perform a large scale analysis on one of the broadest biome in the world and to underline the different patterns of fire in these two

Recently a number of traditional models related to the percolation theory has been considered by means of a new computational methodology that does not use Cantor's ideas and describes infinite and infinitesimal numbers in accordance with the principle 'The whole is greater than the part' (Euclid's Common Notion 5). Here we apply the new arithmetic to a cellular automaton forest-fire model which is connected with the percolation methodology and in some sense combines the dynamic and the static percolation problems and under certain conditions exhibits critical fluctuations. It is well known that there exist two versions of the model: real forest-fire model where fire catches adjacent trees in the forest in the step by step manner and simplified version with instantaneous combustion. Using new approach we observe that in both situations we deal with the same model but with different time resolution. We show that depending on the "microscope" we use the same cellular automaton forest-fire model reveals either instantaneous forest combustion or step by step firing. By means of the new approach it was also observed that as far as we choose an infinitesimal tree growing rate and infinitesimal ratio between the ignition probability and the growth probability we determine the measure or extent of the system size infinity that provides the criticality of the system dynamics. Correspondent inequalities for grosspowers are derived.

Surface CO and ozone data were obtained in 1998 at Happo (36.7°N, 137.8°E, altitude 1840 m) in Japan. Backward trajectory analysis was applied to get the origin of the air mass to the measuring site. The air mass is basically coming from the west over the Asian continent except during summer. A maritime air mass prevails in the summertime, due to a dominant high-pressure system in the Pacific. In most cases, the air mass from the west (from China and Korea) shows a higher CO concentration than the air mass from the north, and the air mass from the Pacific shows the lowest CO concentration. Forestfires in Siberia were highly enhanced in 1998. To assess the influence of these forestfires, air masses from Siberia (from the North/Northwest direction) are divided into two categories: those that passed over the forest-fire region in Siberia and those that did not. This is done using AVHRR/NOAA satellite data and isentropic backward trajectories. The average CO concentration difference between these two categories is about 30 ppbv in May. Similar analysis for ozone data also shows concentrations about 7 ppbv higher for the air masses that passed over the forest-fire region in Siberia. These results suggest that air pollutants emitted by forestfires in Siberia in 1998 could be transported and influence the air at Happo in springtime.

This paper presents a novel system for automatic forest-fire measurement using cameras distributed at ground stations and mounted on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). It can obtain geometrical measurements of forestfires in real-time such as the location and shape of the fire front, flame height and rate of spread, among others. Measurement of forestfires is a challenging problem that is affected by numerous potential sources of error. The proposed system addresses them by exploiting the complementarities between infrared and visual cameras located at different ground locations together with others onboard Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). The system applies image processing and geo-location techniques to obtain forest-fire measurements individually from each camera and then integrates the results from all the cameras using statistical data fusion techniques. The proposed system has been extensively tested and validated in close-to-operational conditions in field fire experiments with controlled safety conditions carried out in Portugal and Spain from 2001 to 2006. PMID:22163958

This paper presents a novel system for automatic forest-fire measurement using cameras distributed at ground stations and mounted on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). It can obtain geometrical measurements of forestfires in real-time such as the location and shape of the fire front, flame height and rate of spread, among others. Measurement of forestfires is a challenging problem that is affected by numerous potential sources of error. The proposed system addresses them by exploiting the complementarities between infrared and visual cameras located at different ground locations together with others onboard Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). The system applies image processing and geo-location techniques to obtain forest-fire measurements individually from each camera and then integrates the results from all the cameras using statistical data fusion techniques. The proposed system has been extensively tested and validated in close-to-operational conditions in field fire experiments with controlled safety conditions carried out in Portugal and Spain from 2001 to 2006. PMID:22163958

Fire is an important feature of many forest ecosystems, although the quantification of its effects is compromised by the large scale at which fire occurs and its inherent unpredictability. A recurring problem is the use of subsamples collected within individual burns, potentially resulting in spatially autocorrelated data. Using subsamples from six different fires (and three unburned control areas) we show little evidence for strong spatial autocorrelation either before or after burning for eight measures of forest conditions (both fuels and vegetation). Additionally, including a term for spatially autocorrelated errors provided little improvement for simple linear models contrasting the effects of early versus late season burning. While the effects of spatial autocorrelation should always be examined, it may not always greatly influence assessments of fire effects. If high patch scale variability is common in Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forests, even following more than a century of fire exclusion, treatments designed to encourage further heterogeneity in forest conditions prior to the reintroduction of fire will likely be unnecessary.

Exotic diseases have fundamentally altered the structure and function of forest ecosystems. Controlling exotic diseases across large expanses of forest has proven difficult, but fire may reduce the levels of diseases that are sensitive to environmental conditions. We examined Cornus florida populations in burned and unburned Quercus-Carya stands to determine if burning prior to anthracnose infection has reduced the impacts of an exotic fungal disease, dogwood anthracnose, caused by Discula destructiva. We hypothesized that fire has altered stand structure and created open conditions less conducive to dogwood anthracnose. We compared C. florida density, C. florida health, and species composition and density among four sampling categories: unburned stands, and stands that had burned once, twice, and 3 times over a 20-year period (late 1960s to late 1980s). Double burn stands contained the greatest density of C. florida stems (770 stems ha(-1)) followed by triple burn stands (233 stems ha(-1)), single burn stands (225 stems ha(-1)) and unburned stands (70 stems ha(-1); P < 0.01). We observed less crown dieback in small C. florida trees (<5 cm diameter at breast height) in burned stands than in unburned stands (P < 0.05). Indicator species analysis showed that burning favored species historically associated with Quercus-Carya forests and excluded species associated with secondary succession following nearly a century of fire suppression. Our results suggest that fire may mitigate the decline of C. florida populations under attack by an exotic pathogen by altering forest structure and composition. Further, our results suggest that the burns we sampled have had an overall restorative effect on forest communities and were within the fire return interval of the historic fire regime. Consequently, prescribed fire may offer a management tool to reduce the impacts of fungal disease in forest ecosystems that developed under historic burning regimes. PMID:18026756

CONTENTS: Summary 1 I. Introduction 1 II. Giant eucalypts in a global context 2 III. Giant eucalypts - taxonomy and distribution 4 IV. Growth of giant eucalypts 6 V. Fire and regeneration of giant eucalypts 8 VI. Are giant eucalypts different from other rain-forest trees? 9 VII. Conclusions 10 Acknowledgements 11 References 11 SUMMARY: Tree species exceeding 70 m in height are rare globally. Giant gymnosperms are concentrated near the Pacific coast of the USA, while the tallest angiosperms are eucalypts (Eucalyptus spp.) in southern and eastern Australia. Giant eucalypts co-occur with rain-forest trees in eastern Australia, creating unique vegetation communities comprising fire-dependent trees above fire-intolerant rain-forest. However, giant eucalypts can also tower over shrubby understoreys (e.g. in Western Australia). The local abundance of giant eucalypts is controlled by interactions between fire activity and landscape setting. Giant eucalypts have features that increase flammability (e.g. oil-rich foliage and open crowns) relative to other rain-forest trees but it is debatable if these features are adaptations. Probable drivers of eucalypt gigantism are intense intra-specific competition following severe fires, and inter-specific competition among adult trees. However, we suggest that this was made possible by a general capacity of eucalypts for 'hyper-emergence'. We argue that, because giant eucalypts occur in rain-forest climates and share traits with rain-forest pioneers, they should be regarded as long-lived rain-forest pioneers, albeit with a particular dependence on fire for regeneration. These unique ecosystems are of high conservation value, following substantial clearing and logging over 150 yr. PMID:23121314

Forests represent an important role in the control of atmospheric emissions through carbon capture. However, in forestfires, the carbon stored during photosynthesis is released into the atmosphere. The carbon quantification, in forest burning, is important for the development of measures for its control. The aim of this study was to quantify CO2 and CO emissions of forestfires in Western Amazonia. In this paper, results are described of forestfire experiments conducted in Cruzeiro do Sul and Rio Branco, state of Acre, and Candeias do Jamari, state of Rondônia, Brazil. These cities are located in the Western portion of the Brazilian Amazon region. The biomass content per hectare, in the virgin forest, was measured by indirect methods using formulas with parameters of forest inventories in the central hectare of the test site. The combustion completeness was estimated by randomly selecting 10% of the total logs and twelve 2 × 2 m2 areas along three transects and examining their consumption rates by the fire. The logs were used to determine the combustion completeness of the larger materials (characteristic diameters larger than 10 cm) and the 2 × 2 m2 areas to determine the combustion completeness of small-size materials (those with characteristic diameters lower than 10 cm) and the. The overall biomass consumption by fire was estimated to be 40.0%, 41.2% and 26.2%, in Cruzeiro do Sul, Rio Branco and Candeias do Jamari, respectively. Considering that the combustion gases of carbon in open fires contain approximately 90.0% of CO2 and 10.0% of CO in volumetric basis, the average emission rates of these gases by the burning process, in the three sites, were estimated as 191 ± 46.7 t ha-1 and 13.5 ± 3.3 t ha-1, respectively.

To comply with certain elements of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, a number of utilities operating coal fired power plants have switched to low-rank bituminous and semi-bituminous coals as an alternative to other fuels like natural gas. Power plants firing and handling this variety of coal may be extremely prone to fires nd explosions as the coal is conveyed from storage on to the boilers due to a phenomenon known as spontaneous combustion. The American Society of Testing for Materials ranks coals by their tendency to oxidize. The lower the coal`s rank, the greater its tendency to absorb oxygen and, consequently, the greater its tendency to spontaneously combust. This unique property creates a new type of fire and explosion hazard not previously experienced by many coal-fired plants. Fires involving coal crushers, storage silos, conveyors, bunkers and pulverizer mills generally occur as a result of two ignition sources: spontaneous combustion (self-heating) of coal and frictional heating of the coal`s conveyance system.

As the risk for a forestfire is largely influenced by weather, evaluating its tendency under a changing climate becomes important for management and decision making. Currently, biases in climate models make it difficult to realistically estimate the future climate and consequent impact on fire risk. A distribution-based scaling (DBS) approach was developed as a post-processing tool that intends to correct systematic biases in climate modelling outputs. In this study, we used two projections, one driven by historical reanalysis (ERA40) and one from a global climate model (ECHAM5) for future projection, both having been dynamically downscaled by a regional climate model (RCA3). The effects of the post-processing tool on relative humidity and wind speed were studied in addition to the primary variables precipitation and temperature. Finally, the Canadian Fire Weather Index system was used to evaluate the influence of changing meteorological conditions on the moisture content in fuel layers and the fire-spread risk. The forestfire risk results using DBS are proven to better reflect risk using observations than that using raw climate outputs. For future periods, southern Sweden is likely to have a higher fire risk than today, whereas northern Sweden will have a lower risk of forestfire.

A successional process model has been adapted for use with species from ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir (Pinus ponderosa var. ponderosa)/(Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glacua) forests of the inland Northwest. Its design allows modification for application to other forest types. This model, FIRESUM, simulates tree establishment, growth, and mortality, along with live and dead fuel accumulation, fire behavior, and fuel reduction on a 400-m{sup 2} plot. The modeling contains algorithms for influences on tree establishment and growth including temperature, water stress, light tolerance, and site quality. The model was used to predict 200 yr of forest succession for five different disturbance regimes. This allowed comparison of patterns of basal area by species, of duff and fuel accumulation, and of fire intensities among the following scenarios: (1) no fires (fire suppression), (2) consistent fire intervals of 10, 20, and 50 yr, and (3) a natural fire regime of variable intervals reconstructed from fire scarred trees. These five scenarios resulted in a differential survival of species determining dominance in the understory and eventually in the overstory. A test of the model showed predictions to be within 19% of field observations, and a sensitivity analysis of FIRESUM showed parameters associated with the growth algorithm to be most critical for predicting successional trends.

The detection of fires on-board commercial aircraft is extremely important for safety reasons. Although dependable firedetection equipment presently exists within the cabin, detection of fire within the cargo hold has been less reliable and susceptible to false alarms. A second, independent method of firedetection to complement the conventional smoke detection techniques, such as the measurement of chemical species indicative of a fire, will help reduce false alarms and improve aircraft safety. Although many chemical species are indicative of a fire, two species of particular interest are CO and CO2. This paper discusses microfabricated chemical sensor development tailored to meet the needs of fire safety applications. This development is based on progress in three types of technology: 1) Micromachining and microfabrication (Microsystem) technology to fabricate miniaturized sensors. 2) The use of nanocrystalline materials to develop sensors with improved stability combined with higher sensitivity. 3) The development of high temperature semiconductors, especially silicon carbide. The individual sensor being developed and their level of maturity will be presented.

We present a prototype of a Strip Resistive Thick GEM (S-RETGEM) photosensitive gaseous detector filled with Ne and ethylferrocene (EF) vapours at a total pressure of 1 atm for an early forestfiredetection system. Measurements show that it is one hundred times more sensitive than the best commercial ultraviolet (UV) flame detectors; and therefore, it is able to reliably detect a flame of ~ 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 m3 at a distance of about 1 km. An additional and unique feature of this detector is its imaging capability, which in combination with other techniques, may significantly reduce false fire alarms rate when operating in an automatic mode. Preliminary results conducted with air-filled photosensitive gaseous detectors are also presented. The main advantages of this approach include both the simplicity of manufacturing and affordability of construction materials such as plastics and glues specifically reducing detector production cost. The sensitivity of these air-filled detectors at certain conditions may be as high as those filled with Ne and EF. Long-term tests of such sealed detectors indicate a significant progress in this direction. We believe that our detectors utilized in addition to other flame and smoke sensors will exceptionally increase the capability to detectforestfire at a very early stage of development. Our future efforts will be focused on attempts to commercialize such detectors utilizing our aforementioned findings.

While fire shapes the structure of forests and acts as a keystone process, the details of how fire modifies forest structure have been difficult to evaluate because of the complexity of interactions between fires and forests. We studied this relationship across 69.2 km2 of Yosemite National Park, USA, that was subject to 32 fires ⩾40 ha between 1984 and 2010. Forests types included ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), white fir-sugar pine (Abies concolor/Pinus lambertiana), and red fir (Abies magnifica). We estimated and stratified burned area by fire severity using the Landsat-derived Relativized differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (RdNBR). Airborne LiDAR data, acquired in July 2010, measured the vertical and horizontal structure of canopy material and landscape patterning of canopy patches and gaps. Increasing fire severity changed structure at the scale of fire severity patches, the arrangement of canopy patches and gaps within fire severity patches, and vertically within tree clumps. Each forest type showed an individual trajectory of structural change with increasing fire severity. As a result, the relationship between estimates of fire severity such as RdNBR and actual changes appears to vary among forest types. We found three arrangements of canopy patches and gaps associated with different fire severities: canopy-gap arrangements in which gaps were enclosed in otherwise continuous canopy (typically unburned and low fire severities); patch-gap arrangements in which tree clumps and gaps alternated and neither dominated (typically moderate fire severity); and open-patch arrangements in which trees were scattered across open areas (typically high fire severity). Compared to stands outside fire perimeters, increasing fire severity generally resulted first in loss of canopy cover in lower height strata and increased number and size of gaps, then in loss of canopy cover in higher height strata, and eventually the transition to open areas with few or no trees. However

... employer shall locate or otherwise protect detection equipment so that it is protected from mechanical or... of fire detectors is based upon design data obtained from field experience, or tests,...

Despite the huge resources invested in fire suppression, the impact of wildfires has considerably increased across the Mediterranean region since the second half of the 20th century. Modulating fire suppression efforts in mild weather conditions is an appealing but hotly-debated strategy to use unplanned fires and associated fuel reduction to create opportunities for suppression of large fires in future adverse weather conditions. Using a spatially-explicit fire-succession model developed for Catalonia (Spain), we assessed this opportunistic policy by using two fire suppression strategies that reproduce how firefighters in extreme weather conditions exploit previous fire scars as firefighting opportunities. We designed scenarios by combining different levels of fire suppression efficiency and climatic severity for a 50-year period (2000-2050). An opportunistic fire suppression policy induced large-scale changes in fire regimes and decreased the area burnt under extreme climate conditions, but only accounted for up to 18-22% of the area to be burnt in reference scenarios. The area suppressed in adverse years tended to increase in scenarios with increasing amounts of area burnt during years dominated by mild weather. Climate change had counterintuitive effects on opportunistic fire suppression strategies. Climate warming increased the incidence of large fires under uncontrolled conditions but also indirectly increased opportunities for enhanced fire suppression. Therefore, to shift fire suppression opportunities from adverse to mild years, we would require a disproportionately large amount of area burnt in mild years. We conclude that the strategic planning of fire suppression resources has the potential to become an important cost-effective fuel-reduction strategy at large spatial scale. We do however suggest that this strategy should probably be accompanied by other fuel-reduction treatments applied at broad scales if large-scale changes in fire regimes are to be

Fire is the primary process which organizes the physical and biological attributes of the boreal biome and influences energy flows and biogeochemical cycles, particularly the carbon and nitrogen cycle. We established a forestfire chronosequence in the northern boreal forest in Lapland (Värriö Strict Nature Reserve), Finland (67°46' N, 29°35' E) that spans 160 years. Soil organic matter and its turnover were measured in and ex situ, as well as biomass of trees. The fungal biomass was assessed using soil ergosterol contents. The results indicate that fires slow down the turnover of soil organic matter for a period of at least 50 years. The turnover rate in recently burnt sites was only half of the turnover of the old forest site. Decreases in the turnover where still substantial 50 years after fire. The slow recovery of fungal biomass after fires seems to be the cause of the decrease since sites with a higher concentration of fungal biomass in the soils had shorter soil organic matter turnover rates. Increases in stand foliar biomass were less important for the turnover of soil organic matter. We tried to explore the potential importance of our finding using a simple data driven simulation model that estimates soil carbon dynamic from litter input and the measured soil carbon turnover times. The results indicate the initial post-fire slowdown of soil carbon turnover is an important component of the boreal carbon cycle. Using our fire intervals the simulated soil carbon stocks with a lower post-fire soil organic matter turnover were up to 15 % larger than simulations assuming a constant carbon turnover rate. Our sensitivity analysis indicates that the effects will be larger in areas with frequent fires. We do not know which environmental factors cause the delay in the turnover time and the effects of fires on post fire soil organic matter turnover could be considerably smaller or larger. Altogether our results fit well to published results from laboratory studies

Recent large and severe outbreaks of native bark beetles have raised concern among the general public and land managers about potential for amplified fire activity in western North America. To date, the majority of studies examining bark beetle outbreaks and subsequent fire severity in the U.S. Rocky Mountains have focused on outbreaks of mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) forests, but few studies, particularly field studies, have addressed the effects of the severity of spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby) infestation on subsequent fire severity in subalpine Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) forests. In Colorado, the annual area infested by spruce beetle outbreaks is rapidly rising, while MPB outbreaks are subsiding; therefore understanding this relationship is of growing importance. We collected extensive field data in subalpine forests in the eastern San Juan Mountains, southwestern Colorado, USA, to investigate whether a gray-stage (< 5 yr from outbreak to time of fire) spruce beetle infestation affected fire severity. Contrary to the expectation that bark beetle infestation alters subsequent fire severity, correlation and multivariate generalized linear regression analysis revealed no influence of pre-fire spruce beetle severity on nearly all field or remotely sensed measurements of fire severity. Findings were consistent across moderate and extreme burning conditions. In comparison to severity of the pre-fire beetle outbreak, we found that topography, pre-outbreak basal area, and weather conditions exerted a stronger effect on fire severity. Our finding that beetle infestation did not alter fire severity is consistent with previous retrospective studies examining fire activity following other bark beetle outbreaks and reiterates the overriding influence of climate that creates conditions conducive to large, high-severity fires in the subalpine zone of Colorado

Smoke emissions from Siberian boreal forestfires exert critical impacts on the aerosol/climate system of subarctic regions and the Arctic. It is, therefore, crucial to assess the ability of such particles to absorb/scatter incoming solar radiation as well as act as cloud condensation nuclei, which is closely linked to the physical and chemical aerosol properties. However, observations of Siberian wildfire emissions are limited, and no systematic database of smoke particle properties is available for this region to date. As part of this study, ambient aerosol samples were collected during two smoke episodes in Tomsk, Siberia, in the summers of 2012 and 2013. In addition, the chemical composition and optical properties of smoke particles derived from the combustion of typical Siberian fuels, including pine wood and debris, were determined during chamber burn experiments in a large aerosol/combustion chamber under controlled combustion conditions representative of wildfires and prescribed burns. Detailed multi-component characterization of individual particles and bulk properties was accomplished with a suite of techniques, including various types of chromatography, microscopy, spectroscopy, and thermo-optical analysis. Individual particle analysis by SEM-EDX combined with cluster analysis revealed characteristic smoke structural components and major types of particles, which allowed to discriminate between flaming and smoldering regimes, reflected in specific morphological and chemical microstructure. The physicochemical properties representing the combustion phase (smoldering versus flaming) and the degree of processing (fresh versus aged) were assessed in the ambient aerosol based on the chamber burn results. For instance, some chemical transformation (aging of smoke particles) was noticed over a period of two days in the absence of sun light in the combustion chamber for certain chemical species, while the molecular tracer levoglucosan appeared to be rather

Our understanding of the present forest structure of western North America hinges on our ability to determine antecedent forest conditions. Sedimentary records from lakes and bogs in the southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico provide information on the relationships between climate and vegetation change, and fire history since deglaciation. We present a new pollen record from Hunters Lake (Colorado) as an example of a high-elevation vegetation history from the southern Rockies. We then present a series of six sedimentary records from ???2600 to 3500-m elevation, including sites presently at the alpine?subalpine boundary, within the Picea engelmannii?Abies lasiocarpa forest and within the mixed conifer forest, to determine the history of fire in high-elevation forests there. High Artemisia and low but increasing percentages of Picea and Pinus suggest vegetation prior to 13 500 calendar years before present (cal yr BP) was tundra or steppe, with open spruce woodland to ???11 900 cal yr BP. Subalpine forest (Picea engelmannii, Abies lasiocarpa) existed around the lake for the remainder of the Holocene. At lower elevations, Pinus ponderosa and/or contorta expanded 11 900 to 10 200 cal yr BP; mixed conifer forest expanded ???8600 to 4700 cal yr BP; and Pinus edulis expanded after ???4700 cal yr BP. Sediments from lake sites near the alpine?subalpine transition contained five times less charcoal than those entirely within subalpine forests, and 40 times less than bog sites within mixed conifer forest. Higher fire episode frequencies occurred between ???12 000 and 9000 cal yr BP (associated with the initiation or expansion of south-west monsoon and abundant lightning, and significant biomass during vegetation turnover) and at ???2000?1000 cal yr BP (related to periodic droughts during the long-term trend towards wetter conditions and greater biomass). Fire episode frequencies for subalpine?alpine transition and subalpine sites were on average 5 to 10 fire

Vegetation fires can alter landscapes and are a significant source of atmospheric emissions, particulates and greenhouse gases. Currently, only coarse spatial resolution sensors with high temporal coverage, such as MODIS or VIIRS, are used for routine global active fire mapping. Higher spatial resolution satellites have not been used due to their low temporal coverage and so are less useful for monitoring fires at the time of satellite overpass. However, looking forward, combination of the recently launched Landsat-8 (2013), Sentinel-2A (2015) and upcoming Sentinel-2B (2016) sensor data will provide 10-30m global coverage multi-spectral reflective wavelength observations approximately every three days. Therefore the development of reflective wavelength active firedetections to take advantage of these new data is highly attractive. Conventional detection algorithms use the elevated thermal emission of fire to detect the location of fires burning at the time of satellite overpass and apply contextual checks to remove commission errors by examination of neighboring pixels. A Landsat 8 active firedetection algorithm that takes advantage of the improved 12-bit radiometric resolution and high reflectance saturation of the Landsat 8 OLI detectors is presented. The algorithm uses the 1.6 μm and 2.2 μm bands without the need for a contextual implementation, or thermal bands, and was parameterized using six months of Landsat 8 data over the conterminous United States. Active firedetection results for Landsat 8 scenes acquired over a range of fire sizes and temperatures in Canada, Brazil and Southern Africa are presented and compared to detections found using an existing Landsat 7 contextual algorithm adapted to the Landsat 8 bands. Results show that the Landsat 8 algorithm has potential for global application, with relatively low omission and commission errors, and is suitable for application to the corresponding Sentinel 2 reflectance wavelength bands.

We propose a new method for detecting abdominal lymphadenopathy by utilizing a random forest statistical classifier to create voxel-level lymph node predictions, i.e. initial detection of enlarged lymph nodes. The framework permits the combination of multiple statistical lymph node descriptors and appropriate feature selection in order to improve lesion detection beyond traditional enhancement filters. We show that Hessian blobness measurements alone are inadequate for detecting lymph nodes in the abdominal cavity. Of the features tested here, intensity proved to be the most important predictor for lymph node classification. For initial detection, candidate lesions were extracted from the 3D prediction map generated by random forest. Statistical features describing intensity distribution, shape, and texture were calculated from each enlarged lymph node candidate. In the last step, a support vector machine (SVM) was trained and tested based on the calculated features from candidates and labels determined by two experienced radiologists. The computer-aided detection (CAD) system was tested on a dataset containing 30 patients with 119 enlarged lymph nodes. Our method achieved an AUC of 0.762+/-0.022 and a sensitivity of 79.8% with 15 false positives suggesting it can aid radiologists in finding enlarged lymph nodes.

Forestfire is a natural phenomenon in many ecosystems across the world. One of the most important components of forestfire management is the forecasting of fire danger conditions. Here, our aim was to critically analyse the following issues, (i) current operational forestfire danger forecasting systems and their limitations; (ii) remote sensing-based fire danger monitoring systems and usefulness in operational perspective; (iii) remote sensing-based fire danger forecasting systems and their functional implications; and (iv) synergy between operational forecasting systems and remote sensing-based methods. In general, the operational systems use point-based measurements of meteorological variables (e.g., temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, precipitations, cloudiness, solar radiation, etc.) and generate danger maps upon employing interpolation techniques. Theoretically, it is possible to overcome the uncertainty associated with the interpolation techniques by using remote sensing data. During the last several decades, efforts were given to develop fire danger condition systems, which could be broadly classified into two major groups: fire danger monitoring and forecasting systems. Most of the monitoring systems focused on determining the danger during and/or after the period of image acquisition. A limited number of studies were conducted to forecast fire danger conditions, which could be adaptable. Synergy between the operational systems and remote sensing-based methods were investigated in the past but too much complex in nature. Thus, the elaborated understanding about these developments would be worthwhile to advance research in the area of fire danger in the context of making them operational.

Changes in ecosystem functions following disturbances are of central concern in ecology and a challenge for ecologists is to understand the factors that affect the resilience of community structures and ecosystem functions. In many forest ecosystems, one such important natural disturbance is fire. The aim of this study was to understand the variation of resilience in six functional groups of invertebrates in response to different fire frequencies in southern Switzerland. We measured resilience by analysing arthropod species composition, abundance and diversity in plots where the elapsed time after single or repeated fires, as determined by dendrochronology, varied. We compared data from these plots with data from plots that had not burned recently and defined high resilience as the rapid recovery of the species composition to that prior to fire. Pooling all functional groups showed that they were more resilient to single fires than to repeated events, recovering 6-14 years after a single fire, but only 17-24 years after the last of several fires. Flying zoophagous and phytophagous arthropods were the most resilient groups. Pollinophagous and epigaeic zoophagous species showed intermediate resilience, while ground-litter saprophagous and saproxylophagous arthropods clearly displayed the lowest resilience to fire. Their species composition 17-24 years post-burn still differed markedly from that of the unburned control plots. Depending on the fire history of a forest plot, we found significant differences in the dominance hierarchy among invertebrate species. Any attempt to imitate natural disturbances, such as fire, through forest management must take into account the recovery times of biodiversity, including functional group composition, to ensure the conservation of multiple taxa and ecosystem functions in a sustainable manner. PMID:16804704

Tropical savanna-forest boundaries are considered to be sensitive indicators of climate change, but direct tests of this are lacking, which limits our ability to predict the future of these two biomes. We used an ecosystem experiment at a savanna-forest boundary to compare the importance of seasonal drought and soil nutrients for limiting forest expansion. We set up twelve 70m x 10 plots, each extending across the biome boundary. Water and nutrient treatments were randomly assigned to these plots in a factorial experiment. The water treatment consisted of a control (no added water) or irrigation (60 mm per week throughout the dry season to eliminate soil water deficit), and the nutrient treatment consisted of a control (no added nutrients or a complete NPK + micronutrients added twice per year to minimize nutrient deficits). After four years, the study site was burned, allowing us to examine interactions with the primary disturbance at savanna-forest boundaries. Tree growth and forest expansion were strongly limited by nutrients, but not water. Nutrient addition doubled rates of tree diameter growth over 4 years (2.4 mm/yr versus 1.1 mm/yr) growth, but irrigation had no detectable effect (1.9 mm/yr versus 1.7 mm/yr). Long-term fire suppression at the site had allowed forest tree species to establish in savanna, and these had more than a 3-fold greater growth rate than savanna species. The higher productivity of forest species was offset by greater biomass loss during fire, but within 3 years these losses were largely recovered. Nutrient limitation, combined with the slow growth of savanna tree species, greatly slows canopy closure in this environment, predisposing the savanna to remain in an open state under occasional burning. These results challenge the perception that rainfall is the primary factor limiting the natural distribution of tropical forest. Climate change is likely to cause a shift in the biome boundary only it is accompanied with a changing fire

Despite the huge resources invested in fire suppression, the impact of wildfires has considerably increased across the Mediterranean region since the second half of the 20th century. Modulating fire suppression efforts in mild weather conditions is an appealing but hotly-debated strategy to use unplanned fires and associated fuel reduction to create opportunities for suppression of large fires in future adverse weather conditions. Using a spatially-explicit fire–succession model developed for Catalonia (Spain), we assessed this opportunistic policy by using two fire suppression strategies that reproduce how firefighters in extreme weather conditions exploit previous fire scars as firefighting opportunities. We designed scenarios by combining different levels of fire suppression efficiency and climatic severity for a 50-year period (2000–2050). An opportunistic fire suppression policy induced large-scale changes in fire regimes and decreased the area burnt under extreme climate conditions, but only accounted for up to 18–22% of the area to be burnt in reference scenarios. The area suppressed in adverse years tended to increase in scenarios with increasing amounts of area burnt during years dominated by mild weather. Climate change had counterintuitive effects on opportunistic fire suppression strategies. Climate warming increased the incidence of large fires under uncontrolled conditions but also indirectly increased opportunities for enhanced fire suppression. Therefore, to shift fire suppression opportunities from adverse to mild years, we would require a disproportionately large amount of area burnt in mild years. We conclude that the strategic planning of fire suppression resources has the potential to become an important cost-effective fuel-reduction strategy at large spatial scale. We do however suggest that this strategy should probably be accompanied by other fuel-reduction treatments applied at broad scales if large-scale changes in fire regimes are

Fire is a long-standing and poorly understood component of the Mediterranean forestlands in Turkey. Fire can alter plant composition, destroy biomass, alter soil physical and chemical properties and reduce soil nutrient pools. However fire can also promote productivity of certain ecosystems by mineralizing soil nutrients and promoting fast growing nitrogen fixing plant species. Fire effects on soils and ecosystems in Turkey and Mediterranean regions are not well understood. This study uses a retrospective space-for-time substitution to study soil macro-nutrient changes on sites which were burned at different times during the last 8 years. The study sites are in the Fethiye Forest Management Directorate in the western Mediterranean Sea region of Turkey. Our samples show 40% less Soil C, and cation exchange capacity (CEC) at 0-20 cm soil depth two weeks after the fire. Soil C and CEC appear to recover to pre-fire level in one year. Concentrations of Mg were significantly lower on new-burn sites, but returned to pre-fire levels in one year. Total soil N concentrations one and two years after fire were 90% higher than other sites, and total P was 9 times higher on new-burn site than averages from other sites. Some implications of these results for forest managers are discussed. PMID:20648809

Satellite remote sensing monitoring of forestfire-points is a routine operation of weather service. By taking advantage of remote sensing information's characteristics such as relatively fixed resolution, little geometric distortion and quite stable data quality, the thesis establishes Henan Satellite Remote Sensing ForestFire-points Automatic Monitoring System in the way of automatic geography registration based on gray correlation and control point database, which can realize automation of the whole process including automatic monitoring,automatic geography registration,automatic fire-points monitoring,automatic production releasing and cell phone short-message notice of fire-points warning information. The system could greatly improve service efficiency. Automatic registration of remote sensing information based on gray correlation and control point database features simpleness and quickness. Through automatic geography registration testing of sunny EOS/MODIS data (at daytime and nightime) during 18 periods from February 2008 to May 2008 in Henan Province with average error of registration is 0.637 pixels at daytime and 0.319 at nighttime, it can fully meet ordinary operation requirements. Fire-point identification and fire-point area estimate method in the system can be applied to monitoring different fires at daytime and at nighttime. Besides, it can automatically screen effective fire-points according to background geographic information, and thus it can improve monitoring accuracy.

Daxing'anling Mountains is one of the areas with the highest occurrence of forest lighting fire in Heilongjiang Province, and developing a lightning fire forecast model to accurately predict the forestfires in this area is of importance. Based on the data of forest lightning fires and environment variables, the MAXENT model was used to predict the lightning fire in Daxing' anling region. Firstly, we studied the collinear diagnostic of each environment variable, evaluated the importance of the environmental variables using training gain and the Jackknife method, and then evaluated the prediction accuracy of the MAXENT model using the max Kappa value and the AUC value. The results showed that the variance inflation factor (VIF) values of lightning energy and neutralized charge were 5.012 and 6.230, respectively. They were collinear with the other variables, so the model could not be used for training. Daily rainfall, the number of cloud-to-ground lightning, and current intensity of cloud-to-ground lightning were the three most important factors affecting the lightning fires in the forest, while the daily average wind speed and the slope was of less importance. With the increase of the proportion of test data, the max Kappa and AUC values were increased. The max Kappa values were above 0.75 and the average value was 0.772, while all of the AUC values were above 0.5 and the average value was 0. 859. With a moderate level of prediction accuracy being achieved, the MAXENT model could be used to predict forest lightning fire in Daxing'anling Mountains. PMID:25011305

Increasing temperatures and drier conditions within the boreal forests of Alaska have resulted in increases in burned area and fire frequency, which alter carbon storage and emissions. In particular, analyses of satellite remote sensing data showed that >20% of the area impacted by fires in interior Alaska occurred in areas that had previously burned since 1950 (e.g., short to intermediate interval fires). Field studies showed that in immature black spruce forests ~ 35 to 55 years old organic layers experienced deep burning regardless of topographic position or seasonality of burning, factors that control depth of burning in mature black spruce forests. Here, refinements were made to a carbon consumption model to account for variations in fuel loads and fraction of carbon consumed associated with fire frequency based on quantifying burned area in recently burned sites using satellite imagery. An immature black spruce (Picea mariana) fuel type (including stands of ~0-50 years) was developed which contains new ground-layer carbon consumption values in order to more accurately account for differences between various age classes of black spruce forest. Both versions of the model were used to assess carbon consumption during 100 fire events (over 4.4 x 10^6 ha of burned area) from two recent ultra-large fire years (2004 and 2005). Using the improved model to better attribute fuel type and consumption resulted in higher ground-layer carbon consumption (4.9% in 2004 and 6.8% in 2005) than previously estimated. These adjustments in ground-layer burning resulted in total carbon consumption within 2004 and 2005 of 63.5 and 42.0 Tg of carbon, respectively. Results from this research could be incorporated into larger scale modeling efforts to better assess changes in the climate-fire-vegetation dynamics in interior Alaskan boreal forests, and to understand the impacts of these changes on carbon consumption and emissions.

Fire is a primary driver of boreal forest dynamics. Intensifying fire regimes due to climate change may cause a shift in boreal forest composition toward reduced dominance of conifers and greater abundance of deciduous hardwoods, with potential biogeochemical and biophysical feedbacks to regional and global climate. This shift has already been observed in some North American boreal forests and has been attributed to changes in site conditions. However, it is unknown if the mechanisms controlling fire-induced changes in deciduous hardwood cover are similar among different boreal forests, which differ in the ecological traits of the dominant tree species. To better understand the consequences of intensifying fire regimes in boreal forests, we studied postfire regeneration in five burns in the Central Siberian dark taiga, a vast but poorly studied boreal region. We combined field measurements, dendrochronological analysis, and seed-source maps derived from high-resolution satellite images to quantify the importance of site conditions (e.g., organic layer depth) vs. seed availability in shaping postfire regeneration. We show that dispersal limitation of evergreen conifers was the main factor determining postfire regeneration composition and density. Site conditions had significant but weaker effects. We used information on postfire regeneration to develop a classification scheme for successional pathways, representing the dominance of deciduous hardwoods vs. evergreen conifers at different successional stages. We estimated the spatial distribution of different successional pathways under alternative fire regime scenarios. Under intensified fire regimes, dispersal limitation of evergreen conifers is predicted to become more severe, primarily due to reduced abundance of surviving seed sources within burned areas. Increased dispersal limitation of evergreen conifers, in turn, is predicted to increase the prevalence of successional pathways dominated by deciduous hardwoods

Significant climatic changes over Northern Eurasia during the 20th century have been reflected in numerous variables of economic, social, and ecological interest, including the natural frequency of forestfires. For the former USSR, we are now using the Global Daily Climatology Network and a new Global Synoptic Data Network archive, GSDN, created jointly by U.S. National Climatic Data Center and Russian Research Institute for Hydrometeorological Information. Data from these archives (approximately 1500 of them having sufficiently long meteorological time series suitable for participation in our analyses) are employed to estimate systematic changes in indices used in the United States and Russia to assess potential forestfire danger. We use four indices: (1) Keetch-Byram Drought Index, (KBDI; this index was developed and widely used in the United States); (2) Nesterov, (3) Modified Nesterov, and (4) Zhdanko Indices (these indices were developed and widely used in Russia). Analyses show that after calibration, time series of the days with increased potential forestfire danger constructed using each of these three indices (a) are well correlated and (b) deliver similar conclusions about systematic changes in the weather conditions conducive to forestfires. Specifically, over the Eastern half of Northern Eurasia (Siberia and the Russian Far East) statistically significant increases in indices that characterize the weather conditions conducive to forestfires were found. These areas coincide with the areas of most significant warming during the past several decades south of the Arctic Circle. West of the Ural Mountains, the same indices show a steady decrease in the frequency of "dry weather summer days" during the past 60 yr. This study is corroborated with available statistics of forestfires and with observed changes in drought statistics in agricultural regions of Northern Eurasia.

Logging, drought, and fire are considered to be among the largest threats facing Amazonian forests. While interactions between two of these three threats have been investigated, interactions between all three have yet to be reported. We hypothesized that logging pre-adapts forests to drought by selecting for drought-tolerant species in gaps and skid trails; that drought most severely affects trees with exposed crowns; that fires kill mostly small trees and those with thin bark; and, that the interaction of these three factors pushes forests towards a smaller-statured and lower basal-area forest that is drought- and fire-tolerant. To address these hypotheses, we complemented a 12-year biennially-censused silvicultural experimental plots that were partially burned in 2004 with a seedling drought-tolerance experiment, bark-thickness measurements, and measurements of seedling survival during the most severe drought in at least 50 years. We find that drought-tolerant seedlings have only slightly higher survival rates than drought-intolerants as climatological water deficit increases, but drought-tolerants survive substantially better than drought-intolerant seedlings in logging gaps and skid-trails, thereby pre-adapting the community of tree species to future droughts. We confirm previous findings that emergent and dominant adult trees suffer more than from drought than co-dominant and sub-canopy trees, and that fire kills mostly small and thin barked trees. Combined, drought and fire tend to reduce forest stature. Overall, we confirmed that logging, drought, and fire pushed this forest towards one that, while reduced in height and basal area, is better adapted to future disturbances.

... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 3 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false What does an agency have to do to certify a fire-safety detection and suppression system? 1234.32 Section 1234.32 Parks, Forests, and Public Property NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION RECORDS MANAGEMENT FACILITY STANDARDS FOR RECORDS STORAGE FACILITIES...

... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 3 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false What does an agency have to do to certify a fire-safety detection and suppression system? 1234.32 Section 1234.32 Parks, Forests, and Public Property NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION RECORDS MANAGEMENT FACILITY STANDARDS FOR RECORDS STORAGE FACILITIES...

... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 3 2013-07-01 2012-07-01 true What does an agency have to do to certify a fire-safety detection and suppression system? 1234.32 Section 1234.32 Parks, Forests, and Public Property NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION RECORDS MANAGEMENT FACILITY STANDARDS FOR RECORDS STORAGE FACILITIES...

... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 3 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false What does an agency have to do to certify a fire-safety detection and suppression system? 1234.32 Section 1234.32 Parks, Forests, and Public Property NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION RECORDS MANAGEMENT FACILITY STANDARDS FOR RECORDS STORAGE FACILITIES...

Forestfires continue to be a very dangerous and extreme violent episode jeopardizing the human lives and owns. Spain is plagued by forest and brush fires every summer, when extremely dry weather sets in along with high temperatures. The use of fire behavior models requires the availability of high resolution environmental and fuel data; in absence of realistic data, errors on the simulated fire spread con be compounded to produce o decrease of the spatial and temporal accuracy of predicted data. In this work we have carried out a sensitivity analysis of different components of the fire model and particularly the fuel moisture content (FMC) such as microphysics and solar radiation model. Three different real fire models have been used: Murcia (September, 7, 2010 19h09 and 9 hours duration), Gabiel (March, 7, 2007, 22h15 and 38 hours duration) and Culla (Marzo, 7, 2007, 23h36 and 37 hours duration). We use the 100 m European Corine Land Cover map. We use the WRF-Fire model developed by NCAR (USA). The WRF mode is run using the GFS global data and over the Iberian Peninsula with 15 km spatial resolution. We apply the nesting approach over the fires areas (located in the South East of the Iberian Peninsula) with 3 km, 1 km and 200 m spatial resolution. The Fire module included into WRF is run with 20 m spatial resolution and the landuse is interpolated from the Corine 100 m land use map. The results show that the Thompson et al. microphysics scheme and the RRTM solar radiation scheme are those with the best combination using a specific counting score to classify the goodness of the results compare with the real burned area. Those pixels not burned by the simulations but burned by the observational data sets are penalized double compare with the vice versa process. The NDVI obtained by satellite on the day of starting the fire is included in the simulations and a substantial improving in the final score is obtained.

Research conducted over the past 20 years has greatly changed our understanding of the extent, patterns, and impact of wildfire in the forests of Russia. The availability of remote sensing data at various scales has been essential to improvements in burned area estimates, and has allowed us to develop a new 30-year record of burned areas in Russia. Fire scar data in selected regions has provided information on fire-climate interactions over the past several centuries. And field data from experimental fires and from wildfires has provided essential information on fire behavior, fuel consumption, and ecosystem fire effects. In this presentation we discuss the historical development of improved data on burned area, fuel characterization and fuel consumption. We will emphasize the impacts of inaccuracies in source data on burned area and fire regimes, vegetation, fuels, fuel consumption, and other factors. We present model results using the Canadian BorFire to develop annual estimates of fuel consumption and emissions for the Asian part of Russia. Potential interactions of fire with large-scale atmospheric patterns appear to be an important factor in determining occurrence and timing of large fire outbreaks, and changes in these patterns are likely to drive future changes in fire regimes. Data will be presented to illustrate these effects. The presentation will conclude with a summary of the current status of knowledge and ongoing research needs.

Extensive forestfires occurred during late July 2014 across the forested region of Siberia, Russia. Smoke plumes emitted from Siberian forestfires underwent long-range transport over Mongolia and northeast China to the Korean Peninsula, which is located ˜ 3000 km south of the Siberian forest. A notably high aerosol optical depth of ˜ 4 was observed at a wavelength of 500 nm near the source of the Siberian forestfires. Smoke plumes reached 3-5 km in height near the source and fell below 2 km over the Korean Peninsula. Elevated concentrations of levoglucosan were observed (119.7 ± 6.0 ng m-3), which were ˜ 4.5 times higher than those observed during non-event periods in July 2014. During the middle of July 2014, a haze episode occurred that was primarily caused by the long-range transport of emission plumes originating from urban and industrial complexes in East China. Sharp increases in SO42- concentrations (23.1 ± 2.1 µg m-3) were observed during this episode. The haze caused by the long-range transport of Siberian forestfire emissions was clearly identified by relatively high organic carbon (OC) / elemental carbon (EC) ratios (7.18 ± 0.2) and OC / SO42- ratios (1.31 ± 0.07) compared with those of the Chinese haze episode (OC / EC ratio: 2.4 ± 0.4; OC / SO42- ratio: 0.21 ± 0.05). Remote measurement techniques and chemical analyses of the haze plumes clearly show that the haze episode that occurred during late July 2014 was caused mainly by the long-range transport of smoke plumes emitted from Siberian forestfires.

Fire significantly affects species composition, structure, and ecosystem processes in boreal forests. Our study objective was to identify the relative effects of climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity on fire occurrence in Chinese boreal forest landscapes. We used historical fire ignition for 1966-2005 and the statistical method of Kernel Density Estimation to derive fire-occurrence density (number of fires/km(2)). The Random Forest models were used to quantify the relative effects of climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity on fire-occurrence density. Our results showed that fire-occurrence density tended to be spatially clustered. Human-caused fire occurrence was highly clustered at the southern part of the region, where human population density is high (comprising about 75% of the area's population). In the north-central areas where elevations are the highest in the region and less densely populated, lightning-caused fires were clustered. Climate factors (e.g., fine fuel and duff moisture content) were important at both regional and landscape scales. Human activity factors (e.g., distance to nearest settlement and road) were secondary to climate as the primary fire occurrence factors. Predictions of fire regimes often assume a strong linkage between climate and fire but usually with less emphasis placed on the effects of local factors such as human activity. We therefore suggest that accurate forecasting of fire regime should include human influences such as those measured by forest proximity to roads and human settlements. PMID:24960228

This study explored the use of satellite data to monitor carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM) in Northern Thailand during the dry season when forestfires are known to be an important cause of air pollution. Satellite data, including Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) CO, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aerosol optical depth (MODIS AOD), and MODIS fire hotspots, were analyzed with air pollution data measured at nine automatic air quality monitoring stations in the study area for February-April months of 2008-2010. The correlation analysis showed that daily CO and PM with size below 10 μm (PM10) were associated with the forestfire hotspot counts, especially in the rural areas with the maximum correlation coefficient (R) of 0.59 for CO and 0.65 for PM10. The correlations between MODIS AOD and PM10, between MOPITT CO and CO, and between MODIS AOD and MOPITT CO were also analyzed, confirming the association between these variables. Two forestfire episodes were selected, and the dispersion of pollution plumes was studied using the MOPITT CO total column and MODIS AOD data, together with the surface wind vectors. The results showed consistency between the plume dispersion, locations of dense hotspots, ground monitoring data, and prevalent winds. The satellite data were shown to be useful in monitoring the regional transport of forestfire plumes. PMID:24326733

Climate change has increased the occurrence, severity, and impact of disturbances on forested ecosystems worldwide. As such there is a growing need to identify factors that contribute to an ecosystem's ability to recover from disturbance, commonly referred to as ecosystem resilience. In trees, drought-induced growth declines may signal decreased ecosystem resilience if mature trees are able to survive in stressful environmental conditions that do not permit successful post-disturbance recruitment and survival. Here we explore links between ecosystem resilience and the growth-climate relationships of pre-fire trees, specifically drought stress signals, across topographic moisture gradients within the boreal forest. We sampled 72 recently (2004) burned black spruce stands within interior Alaska and found the proportion of black spruce relative to deciduous trees decreased post-fire, ranging from almost no change to a 90% decrease. The largest shifts in post-fire species composition occurred in sites where trees showed negative growth responses to warm spring temperatures, and shallow post-fire organic layer depths due to dry site conditions or high fire severity. These sites were generally located at warmer and drier landscape positions, suggesting they are less resilient to disturbance than sites at the wetter end of the gradient. Tree growth-climate responses can provide an estimate of stand environmental stress to ongoing climate change and as such are a valuable tool for predicting landscape variations in forest ecosystem resilience and forecasting future forest composition.

- The current state of knowledge regarding the chemistry of forestfires and regional haze is reviewed. More than 100 compounds have been identified in wood smoke and many of these have also been observed in field studies. Products of biomass combustion can have different environmental effects: CO2 and CH4 may contribute to global warming, NOx and SO2 could contribute to rainwater acidity, whereas smoke particles and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) could affect human health. Also, photochemical reactions of primary emissions from biomass fires can lead to the production of secondary pollutants such as O3. Regional haze episodes caused by forestfires have occurred in SE Asia on several occasions during the 1990s and the reported studies of these episodes are reviewed. Only total suspended particles (TSP) were determined in the earlier studies, and more comprehensive chemical investigations have only emerged during the more recent episodes, notably those of 1997 and 1998. To date, most of the measurements have centred on criteria pollutants (SO2, NO2, CO, O3 and PM10), however, other pollutants (e.g., VOCs, PAHs) have also been determined in certain studies. Rainwater analyses suggest that forestfires do not have a major acidifying effect because dissolved acidic gases (e.g., SO2) are neutralised by alkaline substances (e.g., Ca, Mg, K) that are also emitted by forestfires. There is a need for further laboratory and field studies in order to investigate important pollutant transformation mechanisms.

Mathematical model of heat and mass transfer of crown forestfire is used in this paper, which is developed on the base of experimental research data and laws and methods of mechanics of reacting media. The numerical calculation carried out using software PHOENICS for non stationary three dimensional case. K-Ɛ model of turbulence is taken into account. It is studied the influence of temperature and wind velocity in boundary layer of atmosphere on the turbulent kinematic viscosity coefficient value and distribution of temperature above the crown forestfire front.

I assess the population health effects in Malaysia of air pollution from a widespread series of fires that occurred in Indonesia between April and November of 1997. I describe how the fires occurred and why the associated air pollution was so widespread and long lasting. The main objective is to uncover any mortality effects and to assess how large and important they were. I also investigate whether the mortality effects were persistent or whether they represented a short-term, mortality-harvesting effect. The results show that the smoke haze from the fires had a deleterious effect on the health of the population in Malaysia. PMID:11852832

Numerous predictions indicate rising CO2 will accelerate the expansion of forests into savannas. Although encroaching forests can sequester carbon over the short term, increased fires and drought-fire interactions could offset carbon gains, which may be amplified by the shift toward forest plant communities more susceptible to fire-driven dieback. We quantify how bark thickness determines the ability of individual tree species to tolerate fire and subsequently determine the fire sensitivity of ecosystem carbon across 180 plots in savannas and forests throughout the 2.2-million km(2) Cerrado region in Brazil. We find that not accounting for variation in bark thickness across tree species underestimated carbon losses in forests by ~50%, totaling 0.22 PgC across the Cerrado region. The lower bark thicknesses of plant species in forests decreased fire tolerance to such an extent that a third of carbon gains during forest encroachment may be at risk of dieback if burned. These results illustrate that consideration of trait-based differences in fire tolerance is critical for determining the climate-carbon-fire feedback in tropical savanna and forest biomes. PMID:26426539

Assessing the value of fire planning alternatives is challenging because fire affects a wide array of ecosystem, market, and social values. Wildland fire management is increasingly used to address forest restoration while pragmatic approaches to assessing the value of fire management have yet to be developed. Earlier approaches to assessing the value of forest management relied on connecting site valuation with management variables. While sound, such analysis is too narrow to account for a broad range of ecosystem services. The metric fire regime condition class (FRCC) was developed from ecosystem management philosophy, but it is entirely biophysical. Its lack of economic information cripples its utility to support decision-making. We present a means of defining and assessing the deviation of a landscape from its desired fire management condition by re-framing the fire management problem as one of derived demand. This valued deviation establishes a performance metric for wildland fire management. Using a case study, we display the deviation across a landscape and sum the deviations to produce a summary metric. This summary metric is used to assess the value of alternative fire management strategies on improving the fire management condition toward its desired state. It enables us to identify which sites are most valuable to restore, even when they are in the same fire regime condition class. The case study site exemplifies how a wide range of disparate values, such as watershed, wildlife, property and timber, can be incorporated into a single landscape assessment. The analysis presented here leverages previous research on environmental capital value and non-market valuation by integrating ecosystem management, restoration, and microeconomics. PMID:24878985

Wildlife response to natural disturbances such as fire is of conservation concern to managers, policy makers, and scientists, yet information is scant beyond a few well-studied groups (e.g., birds, small mammals). We examined the effects of wildfire severity on bats, a taxon of high conservation concern, at both the stand (<1 ha) and landscape scale in response to the 2002 McNally fire in the Sierra Nevada region of California, USA. One year after fire, we conducted surveys of echolocation activity at 14 survey locations, stratified in riparian and upland habitat, in mixed-conifer forest habitats spanning three levels of burn severity: unburned, moderate, and high. Bat activity in burned areas was either equivalent or higher than in unburned stands for all six phonic groups measured, with four groups having significantly greater activity in at least one burn severity level. Evidence of differentiation between fire severities was observed with some Myotis species having higher levels of activity in stands of high-severity burn. Larger-bodied bats, typically adapted to more open habitat, showed no response to fire. We found differential use of riparian and upland habitats among the phonic groups, yet no interaction of habitat type by fire severity was found. Extent of high-severity fire damage in the landscape had no effect on activity of bats in unburned sites suggesting no landscape effect of fire on foraging site selection and emphasizing stand-scale conditions driving bat activity. Results from this fire in mixed-conifer forests of California suggest that bats are resilient to landscape-scale fire and that some species are preferentially selecting burned areas for foraging, perhaps facilitated by reduced clutter and increased post-fire availability of prey and roosts. PMID:23483936

Boreal forests of Russia play a significant role in the global carbon cycle and the f lux of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. ecause f ire and other disturbances are ecologically inherent in boreal forests, large areas are burned annually and contributions to the flux of carbo...

In a recent PLOS ONE paper, we conducted an evidence-based analysis of current versus historical fire regimes and concluded that traditionally defined reference conditions of low-severity fire regimes for ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and mixed-conifer forests were incomplete, missing considerable variability in forest structure and fire regimes. Stevens et al. (this issue) agree that high-severity fire was a component of these forests, but disagree that one of the several sources of evidence, stand age from a large number of forest inventory and analysis (FIA) plots across the western USA, support our findings that severe fire played more than a minor role ecologically in these forests. Here we highlight areas of agreement and disagreement about past fire, and analyze the methods Stevens et al. used to assess the FIA stand-age data. We found a major problem with a calculation they used to conclude that the FIA data were not useful for evaluating fire regimes. Their calculation, as well as a narrowing of the definition of high-severity fire from the one we used, leads to a large underestimate of conditions consistent with historical high-severity fire. The FIA stand age data do have limitations but they are consistent with other landscape-inference data sources in supporting a broader paradigm about historical variability of fire in ponderosa and mixed-conifer forests than had been traditionally recognized, as described in our previous PLOS paper. PMID:27195808

Disturbance can both initiate and shape patterns of secondary succession by affecting processes of community assembly. Thus, understanding assembly rules is a key element of predicting ecological responses to changing disturbance regimes. We measured the composition and trait characteristics of plant communities early after widespread wildfires in Alaska to assess how variations in disturbance characteristics influenced the relative success of different plant regeneration strategies. We compared patterns of post-fire community composition and abundance of regeneration traits across a range of fire severities within a single pre-fireforest type– black spruce forests of Interior Alaska. Patterns of community composition, as captured by multivariate ordination with nonmetric multidimensional scaling, were primarily related to gradients in fire severity (biomass combustion and residual vegetation) and secondarily to gradients in soil pH and regional climate. This pattern was apparent in both the full dataset (n = 87 sites) and for a reduced subset of sites (n = 49) that minimized the correlation between site moisture and fire severity. Changes in community composition across the fire-severity gradient in Alaska were strongly correlated to variations in plant regeneration strategy and rooting depth. The tight coupling of fire severity with regeneration traits and vegetation composition after fire supports the hypothesis that disturbance characteristics influence patterns of community assembly by affecting the relative success of different regeneration strategies. This study further demonstrated that variations in disturbance characteristics can dominate over environmental constraints in determining early patterns of community assembly. By affecting the success of regeneration traits, changes in fire regime directly shape the outcomes of community assembly, and thus may override the effects of slower environmental change on boreal forest composition. PMID

Chemical Data for stream drainages in Yellowstone National Park area have been examined for trends associated with the 1988 burn. Limited pre-fire data make assessment difficult. Data from the Snake River (at maximum recorded discharge) suggest that TDS decreases, total Nitrogen remains constant and total Phosphorus increases from pre-fire (and very dry conditions) to post-fire (and more normal conditions). To test these apparent trends post-fire data from adjacent valleys (Jones Creek, burned; Crow Creek, unburned) were compared. Each shows a decrease in TDS, similar nearly constant total Nitrogen and an increase in total Phosphorus. Although year to year changes in surface water seem greater from the burned valley, the data from the unburned valley show similar trends. Therefore these data do not clearly distinguish trends resulting solely from the burn.

Studies were conducted to determine chemical composition and nutritive value of four species of plants commonly used as browse by deer and to determine effects of low- and high-intensity fires upon chemical composition. Total solids, ash, ether extract, crude fiber and nitrogen-free extract contents of red maple, flowering dogwood, white oak and roundleaf greenbrier were not affected by either type of fire. Protein contents of roundleaf greenbrier, red maple and flowering dogwood foliage were significantly higher in the season following the low-intensity fire, but no effects could be determined in the second year. The high-intensity fire produced significant increases in protein contents of all four species, and effects were still apparent at the end of two years.

The "Smoke" experiment is a flight definition investigation that seeks to increase our understanding of spacecraft firedetection through measurements of particulate size distributions of preignition smokes from typical spacecraft materials. Owing to the catastrophic risk posed by even a very small fire in a spacecraft, the design goal for spacecraft firedetection is to detect the fire as quickly as possible, preferably in the preignition phase before a real flaming fire has developed. Consequently the target smoke for detection is typically not soot (typical of established hydrocarbon fires) but instead, pyrolysis products, and recondensed polymer particles. At the same time, false alarms are extremely costly as the crew and the ground team must respond quickly to every alarm. The U.S. Space Shuttle (STS: Space Transportation System) and the International Space Station (ISS) both use smoke detection as the primary means of firedetection. These two systems were designed in the absence of any data concerning low-gravity smoke particle (and background dust) size distributions. The STS system uses an ionization detector coupled with a sampling pump and the ISS system is a forward light scattering detector operating in the near IR. These two systems have significantly different sensitivities with the ionization detector being most sensitive (on a mass concentration basis) to smaller particulate and the light scattering detector being most sensitive to particulate that is larger than 1 micron. Since any smoke detection system has inherent size sensitivity characteristics, proper design of future smoke detection systems will require an understanding of the background and alarm particle size distributions that can be expected in a space environment.

Boreal regions comprise about 17 % of the global land area, and they both affect and are influenced by climate change. To better understand boreal forestfire emissions and plume evolution, 947 whole air samples were collected aboard the NASA DC-8 research aircraft in summer 2008 as part of the ARCTAS-B field mission, and analyzed for 79 non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) using gas chromatography. Together with simultaneous measurements of CO2, CO, CH4, CH2O, NO2, NO, HCN and CH3CN, these measurements represent the most comprehensive assessment of trace gas emissions from boreal forestfires to date. Based on 105 air samples collected in fresh Canadian smoke plumes, 57 of the 80 measured NMVOCs (including CH2O) were emitted from the fires, including 45 species that were quantified from boreal forestfires for the first time. After CO2, CO and CH4, the largest emission factors (EFs) for individual species were formaldehyde (2.1 ± 0.2 g kg-1), followed by methanol, NO2, HCN, ethene, α-pinene, β-pinene, ethane, benzene, propene, acetone and CH3CN. Globally, we estimate that boreal forestfires release 2.4 ± 0.6 Tg C yr-1 in the form of NMVOCs, with approximately 41 % of the carbon released as C1-C2 NMVOCs and 21 % as pinenes. These are the first reported field measurements of monoterpene emissions from boreal forestfires, and we speculate that the pinenes, which are relatively heavy molecules, were detected in the fire plumes as the result of distillation of stored terpenes as the vegetation is heated. Their inclusion in smoke chemistry models is expected to improve model predictions of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation. The fire-averaged EF of dichloromethane or CH2Cl2, (6.9 ± 8.6) × 10-4 g kg-1, was not significantly different from zero and supports recent findings that its global biomass burning source appears to have been overestimated. Similarly, we found no evidence for emissions of chloroform (CHCl3) or methyl chloroform (CH3CCl3

"Understory fires" that burn the floor of standing forests are one of the most important types of forest impoverishment in the Amazon, especially during the severe droughts of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes. However, we are aware of no estimates of the areal extent of these fires for the Brazilian Amazon and, hence, of their contribution to Amazon carbon fluxes to the atmosphere. We calculated the area of forest understory fires for the Brazilian Amazon region during an El Nino (1998) and a non El Nino (1995) year based on forestfire scars mapped with satellite images for three locations in eastern and southern Amazon, where deforestation is concentrated. The three study sites represented a gradient of both forest types and dry season severity. The burning scar maps were used to determine how the percentage of forest that burned varied with distance from agricultural clearings. These spatial functions were then applied to similar forest/climate combinations outside of the study sites to derive an initial estimate for the Brazilian Amazon. Ninety-one percent of the forest area that burned in the study sites was within the first kilometer of a clearing for the non ENSO year and within the first four kilometers for the ENSO year. The area of forest burned by understory forestfire during the severe drought (ENSO) year (3.9 millions of hectares) was 13 times greater than the area burned during the average rainfall year (0.2 million hectares), and twice the area of annual deforestation rate. Dense forest was, proportionally, the forest area most affected by understory fires during the El Nino year, while understory fires were concentrated in transitional forests during the year of average rainfall. Our estimate of aboveground tree biomass killed by fire ranged from 0.06 Pg to 0.38 Pg during the ENSO and from 0,004 Pg to 0,024 Pg during the non ENSO.

Synthesis of the literature suggests that physical, chemical, and biological elements of a watershed interact with long-term climate to influence fire regime, and that these factors, in concordance with the postfire vegetation mosaic, combine with local-scale weather to govern the trajectory and magnitude of change following a fire event. Perturbation associated with hydrological processes is probably the primary factor influencing postfire persistence of fishes, benthic macroinvertebrates, and diatoms in fluvial systems. It is apparent that salmonids have evolved strategies to survive perturbations occurring at the frequency of wildland fires (100a??102 years), but local populations of a species may be more ephemeral. Habitat alteration probably has the greatest impact on individual organisms and local populations that are the least mobile, and reinvasion will be most rapid by aquatic organisms with high mobility. It is becoming increasingly apparent that during the past century fire suppression has altered fire regimes in some vegetation types, and consequently, the probability of large stand-replacing fires has increased in those areas. Current evidence suggests, however, that even in the case of extensive high-severity fires, local extirpation of fishes is patchy, and recolonization is rapid. Lasting detrimental effects on fish populations have been limited to areas where native populations have declined and become increasingly isolated because of anthropogenic activities. A strategy of protecting robust aquatic communities and restoring aquatic habitat structure and life history complexity in degraded areas may be the most effective means for insuring the persistence of native biota where the probability of large-scale fires has increased.

The purpose of this work was to assess the response of typical commercial smoke detectors (ionization and photoelectric types) to fires in ventilated rooms representative of utility environments. Detector response has been evaluated for a number of combustibles including both flaming and nonflaming cables and exposure fires. Detector response relationships are developed as a function of the following parameters: (1) the smoke transit time; (2) a detection time factor; (3) a detector sensitivity factor; (4) a ventilation factor; and (5) the nondimensional detector spacing. In addition, an example of smoke detector spacing requirements is given based upon the results of cable tray fire tests in a ventilated environment.

ERS synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery represents a tool for monitoring the effects of fires in boreal regions. Fire-scar signatures from ERS SAR collected over Canada and Alaska are presented. The temporal variability exhibited throughout the growing season is underlined. The investigation showed that these signatures have a seasonal trend related to the patterns of soil moisture originating from snow melts in the spring and precipitation during the growing season. These signatures appear in all the regions of the North American boreal forest and remain visible for up to 13 years after a fire.

The Truckee Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest, in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, has a rich history of human activities. Native American influences, comstock-era logging, fire suppression, development, and recreation have all shaped the natural environment into what it is today. Like much of our national forests in California, forest conditions that have developed are generally much more homogenous and less resistant to disturbance from fire, insect, and disease than they might have been without the myriad of human influences. However, in order to improve the resiliency of our forests to stand replacing disturbances like high severity fire, while managing for integrated anthropomorphic values, it is imperative that management evolve to meet those dynamic needs. Recent advances in remote sensing and GIS allow land managers more access to forest information and can inform site specific prescriptions to change site specific undesirable conditions. It is ecologically and politically complex, yet our forests deserve that microscope. This particular presentation will focus on how the Truckee Ranger District began this process of incorporating several values, generated from stakeholder collaboration, into one project's goals and how those lessons learned informed their most recent project.

The ecological responses of the boreal forest to climate change have global significance because of the large amount of carbon stored in its soils and biomass. Fire, mostly ignited by lightning, is the keystone disturbance agent in this forest. It triggers cycles of forest succession in its wake, and burning is the main avenue for carbon release back to the atmosphere. We studied the interactions between climate, fires, forest succession, and the age distributions of forest stands in a 60-million hectare region of Interior Alaska over the past 150 years. First we developed a statistical model relating climate to area burned over the period of record (1950-2005). Next we combined this model with climate reconstructions to extend the estimates of area burned back to A.D. 1860. We checked the resultant fire history against stand-age data from 5000 living trees sampled in the study region. Then we fed the history of area burned into a computer model that simulates forest succession on real landscapes. Results show striking changes in the means and variances of stand ages over the last 150 years in response to interactions between climate change and the successional dynamics of the boreal forest. Average stand age increased steadily between 1880 and 1940 and has fluctuated at high levels since then, indicating a historically unusual abundance of flammable stands. This accumulation of old stands has created the potential for unusually large fires. Some support for this conclusion comes from the unprecedented large sizes of the areas burned in 2004 and 2005. Further support comes when we add to the analysis the forecasts made by global climate models for Alaska over the next twenty years. Bracketing estimates for climate warming and precipitation change suggest that warmer, drier summers combined with aging forest stands will cause a series of unusually large fires, the like of which have not occurred in the region for >150 years. We infer that the enhanced burning of the

The ability to guide relief vehicles to safety and quickly pass through environments affected by fires is critical in fighting forestfires. In this paper, we focus on route determination in the case of forestfires, and propose a data model that supports finding paths among moving obstacles. This data model captures both static information, such as the type of the response team, the topology of the road network, and dynamic information, such as sensor information, changing availabilities of roads during disasters, and the position of the vehicle. We use a fire simulation model to calculate the fire evolution. The spread of the fire is represented as movements of obstacles that block the responders' path in the road network. To calculate safe and optimal routes avoiding obstacles, the A* algorithm is extended to consider the predicted availabilities of roads. We prove the optimality of the path calculated by our algorithm and then evaluate it in simulated scenarios. The results show that our model and algorithm are effective in planning routes that avoid one or more fire-affected areas and that the outlook for further investigation is promising.

Despite the relevant fire risk to which Italy is subject from north to south, very few analysis focus on this area. This article investigates the causes of forestfires frequency and intensity in Italy during the first decade of the XXI century. The dynamical aspects of fire danger are explored through the use of panel data techniques which fully capture the impacts on forestfires of changes in both socio-economic and climatic conditions. Italy is treated as a unique region in a first model specification, while it is then split into 3 geographical areas (north, centre, and south) to capture locally specific aspects. Two different dependent variables are alternatively employed and a number of ad hoc tests are performed to corroborate the robustness of our estimates. Results highlight the importance of considering the fire situation separately for the northern, central, and southern parts of Italy. While the presence of railway networks positively affects fire risk, the impact of livestock depends on its specific composition. Favourable effects in fire reduction are represented by the increase in education levels (north and centre) and touristic flows (north and south), and by the containment of illegal activities (south). Weather patterns appear to be important determinants all over the Italian peninsula.

Fire is the most spectacular natural disturbance that affects the forest ecosystem composition and diversity. Fire has a devastating effect on the landscape and its impact is felt at every level of the ecosystem and it is possible to map forestfire risk zone and thereby minimize the frequency of fire. There is a need for supranational approaches that analyze wide scenarios of factors involved and global fire effects. Fires can be monitored and analyzed over large areas in a timely and cost effective manner by using satellite imagery. Also Geographical Information System (GIS) can be used effectively to demarcate the fire risk zone map. Bhadra wildlife Sanctuary located in Kamataka, India was selected for this study. Vegetation, slope, distance from roads, settlements parameters were derived for a study area using topographic maps and field information. The Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS)-based forestfire risk model of the study area appeared to be highly compatible with the actual fire-affected sites. The temporal satellite data from 1989 to2006 have been analyzed to map the burnt areas. These classes were weighted according to their influence on forestfire. Four categories of fire risk regions such as Low, Moderate, High and Very high fire intensity zones were identified. It is predicted that around 10.31% of the area falls undermoderate risk zone. PMID:21506484

Wildfires are the primary disturbance agent in boreal forests. Fires cause short-lived emissions but are followed by decades of vegetative regrowth with water and nutrient cycling modified relative to pre-fire conditions. In addition, surface characteristics change during both the fire event and the ensuing regrowth, thus modify albedo related radiative forcings. Extreme fire years, in terms of the number and intensity of fires and the extent of area burned, have become more prevalent in Alaska as the climate has warmed. Continuation of this trend suggests a new fire regime is likely to change successional trajectories of the boreal landscape and associated feedbacks to climate. Using a newly developed map of deciduous versus evergreen (D:E) tree cover, and a database of fire events, we investigated how increased fire severity in Alaska promotes successional trajectories that favor increased abundance of deciduous trees. The D:E map was created using MODIS observations at 500m spatial resolution and field data on stand composition, combined with higher resolution Landsat imagery. Our results indicate that burn severity influenced the relative abundance of deciduous and evergreen vegetation in the decades following fire, but varied locally with the length of the growing season and other site conditions. We combined these findings with MODIS-derived albedo products and field observations, as well as with modeled estimates of carbon pools, to estimate the changes in carbon storage and radiative forcings associated with vegetation succession following disturbance over the past half century.

Analyzing the spatial extent and distribution of forestfires is essential for sustainable forest resource management. There is no comprehensive data existing on forestfires on a regular basis in Biosphere Reserves of India. The present work have been carried out to locate and estimate the spatial extent of forest burnt areas using Resourcesat-1 data and fire frequency covering decadal fire events (2004-2013) in Similipal Biosphere Reserve. The anomalous quantity of forest burnt area was recorded during 2009 as 1,014.7 km(2). There was inconsistency in the fire susceptibility across the different vegetation types. The spatial analysis of burnt area shows that an area of 34.2 % of dry deciduous forests, followed by tree savannah, shrub savannah, and grasslands affected by fires in 2013. The analysis based on decadal time scale satellite data reveals that an area of 2,175.9 km(2) (59.6 % of total vegetation cover) has been affected by varied rate of frequency of forestfires. Fire density pattern indicates low count of burnt area patches in 2013 estimated at 1,017 and high count at 1,916 in 2004. An estimate of fire risk area over a decade identifies 12.2 km(2) is experiencing an annual fire damage. Summing the fire frequency data across the grids (each 1 km(2)) indicates 1,211 (26 %) grids are having very high disturbance regimes due to repeated fires in all the 10 years, followed by 711 grids in 9 years and 418 in 8 years and 382 in 7 years. The spatial database offers excellent opportunities to understand the ecological impact of fires on biodiversity and is helpful in formulating conservation action plans. PMID:24473680

There has been a recent increase in the frequency and extent of wildfires in interior Alaska, and this trend is predicted to continue under a warming climate. Although less well documented, corresponding increases in fire severity are expected. Previous research from boreal forests in Alaska and western Canada indicate that severe fire promotes the recruitment of deciduous tree species and decreases the relative abundance of black spruce (Picea mariana) immediately after fire. Here we extend these observations by (1) examining changes in patterns of aspen and spruce density and biomass that occurred during the first two decades of post-fire succession, and (2) comparing patterns of tree composition in relation to variations in post-fire organic layer depth in four burned black spruce forests in interior Alaska after 10-20 years of succession.Wefound that initial effects of fire severity on recruitment and establishment of aspen and black spruce were maintained by subsequent effects of organic layer depth and initial plant biomass on plant growth during post-fire succession. The proportional contribution of aspen (Populus tremuloides) to total stand biomass remained above 90% during the first and second decades of succession in severely burned sites, while in lightly burned sites the proportional contribution of aspen was reduced due to a 40- fold increase in spruce biomass in these sites. Relationships between organic layer depth and stem density and biomass were consistently negative for aspen, and positive or neutral for black spruce in all four burns. Our results suggest that initial effects of post-fire organic layer depths on deciduous recruitment are likely to translate into a prolonged phase of deciduous dominance during post-fire succession in severely burned stands. This shift in vegetation distribution has important implications for climate-albedo feedbacks, future fire regime, wildlife habitat quality and natural resources for indigenous subsistence

This project resulted in the development, test, and delivery of a patented Machine Vision Fire Detector System (MVFDS) that provides for the first time a unique and reliable method of detectingfire events and determining their size, growth, distance, location, and overall threat in real-time. The system also provides simultaneous video coverage of the area being monitored by the MVFDS for fires. This 'man-in-the-loop' capability provides an option for manual override of automatic suppressant dump, or manual release of suppressant agent. The MVFDS is designed to be immune to false alarms based upon its decision process which involves identification, comparison, and deduction (emulates a human's process of deduction/decision) of unique properties of fire. These unique properties have been included into a fire model from which algorithms have been developed. The MVFDS uses a commercially available color CCD camera, frame grabber, microprocessor, video chip, and electronics. In aircraft hangar and facility applications, the detector is designed to identify a 2-foot x 2-foot fire at a distance of 100 feet in less than 0.5 seconds with no false alarms and, in other applications, detectfires in less than 30 milliseconds.

maintained by the National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center. The FCAV EWS has been used to aid multiple Federal and State agency forest management activities, including aerial disturbance detection surveys, as well as rapid response preliminary assessments of timber loss due to tornadoes, regional drought studies, and fire damage assessments. The FCAV allows end-users to assess the context of apparent forest vegetation change with respect to ancillary data, such as land cover, topography, hydrology, climate variables, and administrative boundaries. Such change products are being evaluated through case studies involving comparison with higher spatial resolution satellite, aerial, and field data. The presentation will include multiple examples in which regionally evident forest disturbances were successfully detected and monitored with the MODIS-based change products, as part of the FCAV. FCAV's MODIS forest change products enable end-users (e.g., resource managers) to view and monitor forest hazards at regional scales throughout the year and across the nation.

Payments for ecosystems services and watershed investment programs have created new solutions for restoring upland fire-adapted forests to support downstream surface-water and groundwater uses. Water from upland forests supports not only a significant percentage of the public water supplies in the U.S., but also extensive riparian, aquatic, and groundwater dependent ecosystems. Many rare, endemic, threatened, and endangered species are supported by the surface-water and groundwater generated from the forested uplands. In the Ponderosa pine forests of the Southwestern U.S., post Euro-American settlement forest management practices, coupled with climate change, has significantly impacted watershed functionality by increasing vegetation cover and associated evapotranspiration and decreasing runoff and groundwater recharge. A large Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program project known as the Four Forests Restoration Initiative is developing landscape scale processes to make the forests connected to these watersheds more resilient. However, there are challenges in financing the initial forest treatments and subsequent maintenance treatments while garnering supportive public opinion to forest thinning projects. A solution called the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project is utilizing City tax dollars collected through a public bond to finance forest treatments. Exit polling from the bond election documented the reasons for the 73 % affirmative vote on the bond measure. These forest treatments have included in their actions restoration of associated ephemeral stream channels and spring ecosystems, but resources still need to be identified for these actions. A statewide strategy for developing additional forest restoration resources outside of the federal financing is being explored by state and local business and governmental leaders. Coordination, synthesis, and modeling supported by a NSF Water Sustainability and Climate project has been instrumental in

Rising CO2 is predicted to accelerate the expansion of forests into savannas. Although encroaching forests can sequester carbon over the short-term, the carbon pools may become increasingly sensitive to fire due to a shift towards plant communities more susceptible to fire-driven dieback. We quantify how functional traits determine the ability of individual tree species to tolerate fire and subsequently determine the fire-sensitivity of ecosystem carbon across 180 plots throughout the 2.2-million km2 Cerrado region in Brazil. We find that accounting for variation in functional traits fundamentally changes fire-driven dieback predictions: savannas and forests switched from having similar amounts of potential carbon losses to forests containing substantially greater potential carbon losses when differences in functional traits were considered. In fact, we find that not accounting for variation in functional traits underestimated carbon losses in forests by ~50%, summing to an underestimation of 0.22PgC across the Cerrado region. In total, shifts in the fire sensitivity of forests due to changes in community composition and functional traits may offset a third of carbon gains during forest encroachment. These results illustrate that functional traits are critical for determining the climate-carbon-fire feedback in tropical savanna-forest biomes.

We consider the possibilities for designing a new hardware and software system for firedetection, based on combination of video analytics technology and analysis of IR signals from sensors in the mid-IR and thermal IR ranges. We consider the parameters (in particular, the maximum distance for detection of the seat of a fire) for IR sensors based on various photodetectors. As a detector in the visible range, designed for early smoke or open flame detection based on analysis of sequential images of a scene, we suggest using a standard IP network camera.

Changes in vegetation and fuels were evaluated from measurements taken before and after fuel reduction treatments (prescribed fire, mechanical treatments, and the combination of the two) at 12 Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) sites located in forests with a surface fire regime across the conterminous United States. To test the relative effectiveness of fuel reduction treatments and their effect on ecological parameters we used an informationtheoretic approach on a suite of 12 variables representing the overstory (basal area and live tree, sapling, and snag density), the understory (seedling density, shrub cover, and native and alien herbaceous species richness), and the most relevant fuel parameters for wildfire damage (height to live crown, total fuel bed mass, forest floor mass, and woody fuel mass). In the short term (one year after treatment), mechanical treatments were more effective at reducing overstory tree density and basal area and at increasing quadratic mean tree diameter. Prescribed fire treatments were more effective at creating snags, killing seedlings, elevating height to live crown, and reducing surface woody fuels. Overall, the response to fuel reduction treatments of the ecological variables presented in this paper was generally maximized by the combined mechanical plus burning treatment. If the management goal is to quickly produce stands with fewer and larger diameter trees, less surface fuel mass, and greater herbaceous species richness, the combined treatment gave the most desirable results. However, because mechanical plus burning treatments also favored alien species invasion at some sites, monitoring and control need to be part of the prescription when using this treatment. ?? 2009 by the Ecological Society of America.

Forestfires can cause catastrophic damage on natural resources. In the meantime, it can also bring serious economic and social impacts. Meteorological factors play a critical role in establishing conditions favorable for a forestfire. Effective prediction of forestfire occurrences could prevent or minimize losses. This paper uses count data models to analyze fire occurrence data which is likely to be dispersed and frequently contain an excess of zero counts (no fire occurrence). Such data have commonly been analyzed using count data models such as a Poisson model, negative binomial model (NB), zero-inflated models, and hurdle models. Data we used in this paper is collected from Qiannan autonomous prefecture of Guizhou province in China. Using the fire occurrence data from January to April (spring fire season) for the years 1996 through 2007, we introduced random effects to the count data models. In this study, the results indicated that the prediction achieved through NB model provided a more compelling and credible inferential basis for fitting actual forestfire occurrence, and mixed-effects model performed better than corresponding fixed-effects model in forestfire forecasting. Besides, among all meteorological factors, we found that relative humidity and wind speed is highly correlated with fire occurrence. PMID:25790309

The fire regime in the boreal region of interior Alaska has been intensifying in terms of both area burned and severity over the last three decades. Based on projections of climate change, this trend is expected to continue throughout the 21st century. Fire causes abrupt changes in energy, nutrient and water balances influencing habitat and vegetation composition. An important factor influencing these changes is the reduction of the soil organic horizon because of differential regeneration capabilities of conifer and evergreen shrubs vs. deciduous and herbaceous vegetation on organic vs. mineral soils. The goal of this study is to develop a prognostic model to simulate the effects of fire severity on soil organic horizons and to evaluate its long-term consequences on forest composition in interior Alaska. Existing field observations were analyzed to build a predictive model of the depth of burning of soil organic horizon after a fire. The model is driven by data sets of fire occurrence, climate, and topography. Post-fire vegetation succession was simulated as a function of post-fire organic horizon depth. The fire severity and post-fire vegetation succession models were then implemented within a biogeochemistry model, the process-based Terrestrial Ecosystem Model. Simulations for 21st century climate scenarios at a 1 by 1km resolution for the Alaska Yukon River Basin were conducted to evaluate the effects of considering vs. ignoring post-fire vegetation succession on carbon dynamics. The results of these simulations indicate that it is important for ecosystem models to represent the influence of fire severity on post-fire vegetation succession in order to fully understand the consequences of changes in climate and disturbance regimes on boreal ecosystems.

We investigated the responses of endoparasites in red-backed voles (Myodes gapperi) to fire in a boreal forest ecosystem. Because fire affects the environmental conditions and biodiversity of the forest ecosystem, the life cycle of parasites may also be affected because of the absence of intermediate hosts in the environment. We hypothesized that the prevalence of endoparasites would be influenced by the parasites' life cycle and habitat characteristics (forest vs. burned). We found that prevalence of endoparasites was different between forested and burned habitats (chi(2)=37.49, P<0.001). Cestodes, nematodes, and coccidia showed different responses to habitat alteration (chi(2)=37.43, P<0.001). There was a higher prevalence of cestodes in forested (53.5%) than burned habitats (35.0%). However, there was higher prevalence of coccidia in burned (55.0%) than forested (42.9%) habitats. Furthermore, although prevalence of cestode infection was lower in burned than forested habitat, individuals in both habitats had similar intensities of cestodes. Our study showed that habitat can significantly affect the parasite communities, depending on specific parasite life cycles. PMID:20090027

The increased role of wildland fire across the rangeland-dry forest continuum in the western United States (US) presents landscape-scale consequences relative runoff and erosion. Much of the Intermountain West now exists in a state in which rangeland and woodland wildfires stimulated by invasive che...

The topic of the assignment for eighth-grade students was reporting on the forestfires in Indonesia in chronological order, from 26 August to 27 September 1997. The final stage of the assignment was composing a report in essay format. The goal of this presentation was to examine the historical interpretation of the events and to simultaneously…

Recent fire activity throughout Alaska has increased the need to understand postfire impacts on soils and permafrost vulnerability. Our study utilized data and modeling from a permafrost and ecosystem gradient to develop a mechanistic understanding of the short- and long-term impacts of tundra and boreal forestfires on soil thermal dynamics. Fires influenced a variety of factors that altered the surface energy budget, soil moisture, and the organic-layer thickness with the overall effect of increasing soil temperatures and thaw depth. The postfire thickness of the soil organic layer and its impact on soil thermal conductivity was the most important factor determining postfire soil temperatures and thaw depth. Boreal and tundra ecosystems underlain by permafrost experienced smaller postfire soil temperature increases than the nonpermafrost boreal forest from the direct and indirect effects of permafrost on drainage, soil moisture, and vegetation flammability. Permafrost decreased the loss of the insulating soil organic layer, decreased soil drying, increased surface water pooling, and created a significant heat sink to buffer postfire soil temperature and thaw depth changes. Ecosystem factors also played a role in determining postfire thaw depth with boreal forests taking several decades longer to recover their soil thermal properties than tundra. These factors resulted in tundra being less sensitive to postfire soil thermal changes than the nonpermafrost boreal forest. These results suggest that permafrost and soil organic carbon will be more vulnerable to fire as climate warms.

The Wild Fire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA), developed at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), has a long legacy of operational wildfire detection and characterization. In recent years, applications of geostationary firedetection and characterization data have been expanding. Fires are detected with a contextual algorithm and when the fires meet certain conditions the instantaneous fire size, temperature, and radiative power are calculated and provided in user products. The WF_ABBA has been applied to data from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-8 through 15, Meteosat-8/-9, and Multifunction Transport Satellite (MTSAT)-1R/-2. WF_ABBA is also being developed for the upcoming platforms like GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and other geostationary satellites. Development of the WF_ABBA for GOES-R ABI has focused on adapting the legacy algorithm to the new satellite system, enhancing its capabilities to take advantage of the improvements available from ABI, and addressing user needs. By its nature as a subpixel feature, observation of fire is extraordinarily sensitive to the characteristics of the sensor and this has been a fundamental part of the GOES-R WF_ABBA development work.

Fire incidence variability is influenced by local environmental variables such as topography, land use, vegetation and weather conditions. These induce a cluster pattern of the fire events distribution. The space-time permutation scan statistics (STPSS) method developed by Kulldorff et al. (2005) and implemented in the SaTScanTM software (http://www.satscan.org/) proves to be able to detect space-time clusters in many different fields, even when using incomplete and/or inaccurate input data. Nevertheless, the dependence of the STPSS method on the different characteristics of different datasets describing the same environmental phenomenon has not been studied yet. In this sense, the objective of this study is to assess the robustness of the STPSS for detecting real clusters using different input datasets and to justify the obtained results. This study takes advantage of the existence of two very different official fire datasets currently available for Portugal, both provided by the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests. The first one is the aggregated Portuguese Rural Fire Database PRFD (Pereira et al., 2011), which is based on ground measurements and provides detailed information about the ignition and extinction date/time and the area burnt by each fire in forest, scrubs and agricultural areas. However, in the PRFD, the fire location of each fire is indicated by the name of smallest administrative unit (the parish) where the ignition occurred. Consequently, since the application of the STPSS requires the geographic coordinates of the events, the centroid of the parishes was considered. The second fire dataset is the national mapping burnt areas (NMBA), which is based on satellite measurements and delivered in shape file format. The NMBA provides a detailed spatial information (shape and size of each fire) but the temporal information is restricted to the year of occurrence. Besides these differences, the two datasets cover different periods, they

The use of land for outdoor recreation is becoming more and more important, and the increased use of the land has raised the risk of man-caused forestfires. The purposes of this study were (1) to determine the kinds and numbers of visits that people are making to public forests, (2) to identify the social characteristics of forest users, (3) to…

Climate warming in boreal forests is likely to increase the frequency and severity of wildfires, with uncertain consequences for soil microbial communities and soil carbon dynamics. This uncertainty is germane because an estimated 90-290 Pg carbon resides in the soils of boreal forests, accounting for 12-42% of global soil organic carbon. Previous work suggests that fires stimulate microbial decomposition, in part due to post-fire increases in soil temperature. However, this hypothesis has rarely been directly tested in a field setting. The objectives of this study were (1) to quantify changes in microbial decomposition following boreal forestfires and (2) to elucidate the mechanisms controlling post-fire changes in microbial decomposition. To address objective 1, we measured the decomposition rate of aspen and black spruce litter across a fire chronosequence in boreal forests of interior Alaska. This fire chronosequence contains sites that burned in 2010, 2004, 1999, 1987, and two "control" sites that are ~100 years old. After one year of decomposition, aspen and black spruce litter decomposing at recently burned sites lost significantly less mass in comparison to mature stands. Decomposition rates increased with the time since fire (Aspen: r2 = 0.691, P < 0.001, Black spruce: r2 = 0.612, P < 0.001). Recently burned sites also had decreased soil microbial biomass (P = 0.005) and lower hydrolytic extracellular enzyme activity (P = 0.001) than mature stands. To address objective 2, we set up a reciprocal transplant to isolate the effects of the soil environment, organic matter origin, and microbial community origin on post-fire microbial decomposition. These main effects were crossed in a full factorial design with two levels of each factor (burned or unburned). We found that organic matter decomposing at a recently burned site lost significantly less mass than organic matter decomposing at an unburned site (P = 0.029), regardless of the organic matter origin or